Co-creation has become the new orientation point for many public organizations. This is due to a widespread consensus that welfare tasks cannot be solved within the usual organizational framework, but must be solved in close contact with the parties that the tasks concern.
New management rationale requires new skills
It's not new for public organizations to look beyond their own ranks of professionals. But their focus has typically been on other public organizations and their collaboration across disciplines, administrations or agencies. But co-creation is more than just collaboration between public parties. In this article, we will discuss the type of co-creation that is about "producing" value and welfare together with partners outside the public sector, so that the responsibility for welfare production is no longer exclusively a public matter. Co-creation is thus about activating resources that lie outside the public system, such as citizens, businesses, volunteers, associations or civil society organizations. Co-creation therefore requires public organizations to think in new ways, and from a management perspective, this means that co-creation must be supported by a number of special management competencies. Co-creation management is thus a new and crucial management discipline.
There are several explanations as to why co-creation has become the order of the day in recent years. If you try to get an overview of the many strategies and policies that public organizations are formulating in the area of co-creation, there are three main motivations behind the ambitions to co-create:
1. an ambition of "more for less" - an economically driven motivation for co-creation. As public budgets are under pressure and the demand for welfare is increasing, co-creation can be a viable way forward, as it activates resources that do not strain public budgets.
2. An ambition for better quality in welfare creation. The point here is that when welfare production is organized in close contact with those affected, it is more likely that welfare is created in a way that combines professionalism, quality and relevance. Simply inviting other perspectives into welfare production than the purely public ones can help create innovation and thus enable new and better welfare solutions.
3. A democratic ambition. Citizens are given a more direct voice in the prioritization and design of welfare solutions, and the democratic values inherent in a direct democracy model are given more space.
Whether one or the other, or a combination, is the motive behind each co-creation initiative varies. However, the motives for organizing co-creation processes can often be found in these three ambitions.
Regardless of the motives behind the co-creation process, the relationship between citizens and the public sector has taken on a new character. This calls for special management skills, as it needs to be supported and motivated from a management perspective.
Typology for co-creation
In practice, the use of the concept of co-creation covers many different initiatives and ways of working. To create an overview of them and to get closer to a description of the specific competencies needed to successfully lead co-creation, a typology of different co-creation approaches is presented here (for a more detailed presentation, see Ulrich 20161).
The typology is built around the division of roles inherent in different approaches to co-creation. A division of roles that varies depending on the subject matter of co-creation.
The typology consists of two axes. One axis deals with the public organization's need to define the outcome of the co-creation process. At one end of the axis, co-creation is relatively tightly controlled by the public actors, as the goal is well-defined. Here, the ambition is to be able to predict the outcome of the process. In practice, however, as in many other contexts where predictability is the ambition, the outcome may not turn out as expected. But even if the reality turns out to be different from what you had imagined you could create, the ambition of predictability is still dominant.
At the other end of the axis, the outcome of co-creation is less well-defined. There is more room for unpredictability in relation to the content and outcome of co-creation. Here, you are open to the possibility that the co-creation process can lead to the development of solutions to the welfare issues that the co-creation addresses, which are not designed in advance.
On the second axis, the focus is on the actors in the co-creation processes. At one end of the axis, public actors play a central role in the co-creation itself, and at the other end of the axis, external actors play this role. Here, citizens, businesses and civil society actors typically play a central role. It's important to remember that even if you don't play a central role in co-creation, you are still part of the process. In our thinking, co-creation does not take place without the public sector as a player and, as mentioned, not without the public sector moving outside the public sector.
When these two axes are combined, a matrix of four ideal-typical approaches to co-creation emerges: Guided co-creation, empowering co-creation, equal co-creation and facilitating co-creation, as illustrated in the figure below:
New competencies are required when citizens and other stakeholders are involved in the work of formulating the core task, developing solutions and implementing these solutions in the concrete work with welfare tasks. The new competencies required when engaging in participatory co-creation processes are generally divided into five areas:
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1. What roles are in play?
Firstly, you need to be aware of your role in the actual co-creation processes. Relevant questions in this regard could be, for example: What tasks should you perform and what responsibilities should you take on? What relationships should you enter into and how can you support the other roles involved in the co-creation process? What resources can I contribute to the co-creation process and what resources can I see are available to the other actors in the co-creation process?
2. What kind of co-creation is it?
Secondly, you need to be aware of what kind of co-creation you are part of. Awareness of this helps to clarify the roles that the previous point focused on.
3. Do you have sufficient strategic competence?
Thirdly, you need to be able to work strategically with the organization of co-creation processes. This means being aware of which forms of co-creation are most appropriate in a given situation. It may be the field of work itself that is decisive here. It could be the maturity of the actors and the involved organization in relation to co-creation: Is the work with co-creation new, or is it something you have a lot of experience with? And finally, the purpose of co-creation can also determine which co-creation approach is the most obvious. Depending on whether the purpose is to get more for less, to get better quality in the task solution or to strengthen the democratic legitimacy in the organization and solution of welfare tasks, the co-creation processes must be organized accordingly.
4. Can you live with unpredictability and failure?
Fourthly, you need to be able to handle the unpredictability inherent in participatory co-creation. Many public organizations are characterized by a culture of zero defects. In politically controlled organizations, there is a general fear of being exposed in the press. In practice, this has led to an increasing demand for documentation and transparency in the public sector, and managers and employees would rather avoid taking risks than risk making mistakes. But with the unpredictability inherent in participatory co-creation, such an approach directly inhibits the co-creation process. Obviously, you shouldn't commit illegalities, but rather challenge the possibilities that lie within the framework. Such an approach is likely to lead to mistakes being made and the risk of making the front page with a bad story. Such situations cannot be avoided 100 percent, but must be dealt with organizationally, managerially and politically.
5. Can you think and practice leadership across the board?
Fifth, you need to be able to think about leadership in new and multiple directions. In participatory co-creation processes, leadership is not just something that happens from the top down. As a leader and as an organization, you also need to be very attentive and responsive to the needs expressed by the actors who are close to the co-creation practices. Involvement in co-creation processes has given employees - and perhaps even more so managers of employees - a voice that is all about leading upwards. With co-creation, a decision-making space has been decentralized, which upper management must be responsive to. In participatory co-creation processes, it is not only vertical management that is central, but also outward management. At first glance, co-creative processes may appear to take place in a leadership vacuum - after all, no one has a special voice and everyone involved is considered equal. But this is not a leadership vacuum, just a different understanding of leadership. Leadership in participatory co-creation processes is not tied to formal power, but is instead about establishing legitimacy. A consequence of this perspective is that leadership does not have a formal and privileged origin in participatory co-creation processes. Instead, leadership is a relationship that is constantly in play and is, in principle, practiced by all the actors involved.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we would like to point out that co-creation must live side by side with the logics of authority and compliance. The fact that co-creation sometimes becomes "the new black" does not mean that there is no continued need for leaders and politicians in the public sector to have a classic but crucial task in ensuring continued mastery of the classic civil servant virtues of keeping things in order/compliance. Similarly, co-creation coexists with the need for leaders to have a continuous focus on optimizing and streamlining the way the public sector performs its core tasks (be it in safety, health, education, etc.). An important point is that co-creation should not replace, but rather complement the thinking that says "It must be cheaper and more efficient!" or "We must make sure the rules are followed". Of course, this thinking is necessary in many cases. It's just not enough to rely on this thinking alone.
Rather, the key message of co-creation as a paradigm is that the challenges facing our society are so complex and resource-intensive that we must seek to supplement the traditional government approach with new ways. Or to put it more bluntly: Government patenting of societal problems and their solutions is insufficient. Together, we must find ways to enable others to contribute to solving complex problems, and we must also ensure that it is possible for a wide range of actors to create welfare.
