While collaborative governance has been identified as one of the key factors influencing South Korea's effective response to the COVID 19 pandemic, little attention has been paid to analyzing the collaborative activities of civil society in specific response settings. What collaborative networks are developed between public organizations and civil society in COVID 19 responses? What collaborative activities are undertaken by civil society, including citizens, businesses, and nonprofit organizations?

To analyze the above research questions, a qualitative content analysis is applied to 32 public service response cases implemented between 2020 and 2022. The cases are related to various public services, including health, education, employment, welfare, public safety, quarantine, tourism, customer protection, and ICT. Qualitative content analysis is applied to derive a typology by coding each collaborative activity per each network based on each case document. The typology of collaborative activities is derived based on the research of horizontal collaborative activities by Agranoff and McGuire (2003) and Kim (2022).

After identifying individual collaborative networks in each COVID-19 response case, the study proceeds to analyze the content of each network's collaborative activities. The study performs intermediate categorization to group similar activities, and finally reclassifies the collaborative activities into higher-level categorizations of types of collaborative activities provided by civil society.

The research results show that there are 25 COVID-19 related public service cases that establish collaborative networks with civil society actors, including citizens (10 cases), non-profit organizations (8 cases), and businesses (16 cases). The other seven cases show collaborative networks only with the other public organizations. As a result of the content analysis of the 25 cases, 62 collaborative activities (i.e. raw data) provided by civil society are identified. The similar types of collaborative activities are reclassified into 17 types of activities (i.e., the intermediate categorizations of collaborative activities). Finally, the 17 collaborative activities are classified into seven types of activities: policy and strategy-making (14 cases), planning and implementation strategy-making (15 cases), information seeking (3 cases), adaptation seeking (2 cases), implementation support (6 cases), project-based partnership (8 cases), and resource sharing (1 case).

The most common activities provided by citizens are related to policy and strategy-making (4 cases) and planning and implementation strategy-making (4 cases). These two types of activities are also the most common activities provided by business organizations (9 cases and 7 cases, respectively). Planning and implementation strategy-making is the most common activity offered by non-profit organizations (4 cases). Project-based partnership activities are carried out by business corporations (5 cases) and non-profit organizations (3 cases).

The study results clearly indicate the significant role of civil society in the realization of public service delivery in COVID-19 responses in South Korea. It further implies that the public service outputs and outcomes in the COVID-19 responses may be the result of the co-creation of public services with citizens, businesses, and non-profit organizations in Korea. Finally, the results of the study suggest that efforts are needed to strengthen collaborative governance capacity for horizontal communication, persuasion, coordination, and integration between government and civil society.

Employment rate disparities among various groups prompt public, private, and third-sector organizations to explore innovative solutions for including disadvantaged job seekers. Cross-sectoral collaborations are lauded as a superior way to address complex social sustainability issues. However, collaboration itself is a complex endeavor, underscoring the need for a more profound understanding of factors that inhibit and enable successful collaborations. This study presents the first international literature review centered on cross-sectoral collaborations for work inclusion. It aims to identify key themes, gaps, and future research directions.

A comprehensive database search was followed by bidirectional citation searches until no more articles were identified, yielding 71 relevant peer-reviewed articles. Bibliometric and content analyses were performed; the latter employed a novel framework resulting in an overview of the ‘how’ (e.g., theory, context) and ‘what’ (e.g., antecedents, internal dynamics, outcome types) of the studied collaborations.

The results reveal that scholarly interest in the topic has surged in recent years, with a trend toward more theoretically oriented studies. Over half of the papers apply a collaboration, governance, institutionalist, or intervention theory lens. The articles predominantly utilize qualitative methods within Western nations. Various external and internal dynamics influencing collaborations, including funding, governance, mutual understanding, and power inequality, are identified.

The study utilizes the framework to identify gaps and puzzles, directing attention toward areas requiring further research. As cross-sectoral collaborations are believed to yield superior outcomes, more studies are needed to critically assess their ultimate impact on employment and link these results to external and internal contingencies. Additionally, the ‘what’ of the studies reveals several under-theorized yet prevalent themes, such as the distribution of benefits and risks among cross-sectoral partners.

Several contradictions and puzzles emerge from the reviewed papers. The significance of funding in the studied collaborations raises questions about how funding availability and structure influence collaborative dynamics, their scalability potential, and, inversely, what we can learn from collaborations ‘making do’ by pooling existing resources. Similarly, trust is frequently cited as a critical driver for collaboration but seldom theorized, raising questions about its optimal level and the potential role of suspicion in collaborations.

This review makes two major contributions. First, it provides a nuanced overview of extant research that can serve as a foundation for future studies and a tool for practitioners to reflect on their collaborative endeavors. Second, it demonstrates the framework’s utility in identifying future research avenues and offers concrete suggestions for future work.

Public welfare co-creation between public and third sector organizations: A systematic review and research agenda. Over the past few decades, there has been a growing research interest in co-creation as a means of public welfare production. Co-creation is understood as a process through which two or more state and non-state actors attempt to enhance public value by sharing and integrating knowledge, resources, and competencies (Torfing et al., 2016). While previous studies have examined co-creation between public sector organizations (PSOs) and citizens, and between PSOs and other actors more broadly, systematic research specifically focused on PSO-TSO co-creation in the context of public welfare production is lacking. Addressing this gap is important due to the unique dynamics of the PSO-TSO relationship and its significant potential for institutionalization in fostering public welfare. Through a systematic literature review this article aims to analyze how public sector organizations (PSOs) engage in co-creation with third sector organizations (TSOs) by investigating the drivers, barriers and outcomes of such collaboration. The paper contributes to the co-creation literature by providing novel insights and extending the discussion on cross-sectoral co-creation as an ‘innovative’ method of public welfare creation. The implications of the study will be discussed and a research agenda will be proposed.

There are many nonprofit organizations (NPOs) that provide services and resources to build the capacity of other NPOs to achieve their mission, such as associations for nonprofit development in US states, local development agencies in the UK, and NPO support centers in Japan. While nonprofit capacity building organizations have become increasingly prominent actors in promoting nonprofit development and social innovation, they have received little scholarly attention to date.

The existing literature on nonprofit capacity building has largely focused on the elements and evaluations of capacity building efforts and neglected those organizations that provide capacity building services. On the other hand, most accounts exploring nonprofit sector growth are based on the entire nonprofit sector or social service organizations. However, nonprofit capacity building organizations do not provide direct services to citizens but offer support services to NPOs. Thus, the growth dynamics of nonprofit capacity building organizations deserve more scholarly attention.

Using stakeholder theory, this study explains what factors contribute to the growth of nonprofit capacity building organizations. A stakeholder of an organization can be defined as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives” (Freeman 1984: 46). More specifically, leveraging a newly constructed dataset of 416 NPO support centers (i.e., NPO incubators) in China, this study examines how both supply-side and demand-side factors affect the growth of these NPO support centers.

Based on an IV-ordered probit model, the preliminary results indicate that the growth of nonprofit capacity building organizations is significantly associated with government regulations, government grants, diverse products, and client demands.

This study contributes to the nonprofit research literature by expanding the understanding of the influence of supply-side and demand-side factors on the growth of nonprofit capacity building organizations. This study also has practical implications for nonprofit managers by demonstrating the importance of designing diverse products and services to meet the demands of the niche market for the long-term viability.