When public services fail: a research agenda on public service failure

Digital age: The path choice of government-citizen value co-creation

This study explores the relationship between government and citizen in the digital age and proposes a specific path to realize the value co-creation of government and citizen in the digital age. Quantitative analysis of 40 policy texts on "digital government construction" of 30 provincial and municipal governments in China before November 2022 was conducted using NVivo12. The case of Minsheng Cloud revealed that provincial and municipal government departments have not paid sufficient attention to citizen participation. Furthermore, citizens' participation ability and enthusiasm are not high. The study found that in the process of strengthening the construction of digital government, "government optimisation", "citizen participation", "governance guarantee", "data governance" and "government digitization" are the key elements. We discuss the feasibility, necessity and coupling of the value co-creation theory to establish the benign interaction between government and citizens and realize co-creation. We find that the "DART" model can be co-created based on value, and that the continuous Improving the four aspects of "dialogue", "access", "transparency" and "risk assessment" will undoubtedly help realize the value co-creation of government and citizens in the digital era, and form a governance pattern of co-construction and sharing. It is therefore of great significance to promote the government's digital construction and digital governance capability to accelerate the construction of digital China and promote the modernisation of the national governance system and governance capability.

Public Service Logic: An Appropriate Recipe for Improving Serviceness in the Public Sector?

Researchers have made efforts to combine service management theory with public administration theory to develop an enhanced model of public service logic and help the public sector to develop services through co-creation with service users. This study considered the appropriateness of public service logic for improving serviceness in the public sector, examining the question through a literature review regarding the main elements of service management in which public service logic is anchored. We found no correspondences between this approach and theories on street-level bureaucracy, despite both perspectives aiming to understand the interactions between users and public service providers, and we wanted to explore this gap. We argue that public sector logic neglects important contextual factors, such as the role of public value and politics. Moreover, street-level bureaucrats have a legitimate responsibility not only to provide user-friendly services (creating value for users) but also, occasionally, to overrule citizens’ wishes and needs (following political decisions). We conclude that public service logic does not support the development of more serviceness in the public sector context, because it needs to consider the justification for having a public sector. Further research should consider users as collective citizens rather than individuals.

Asymmetries of leadership: Agency, response and reason

Drawing on empirical data from an action research project in policing, we propose that the power relations of leadership unfold in asymmetries of agency, response and reason: Leaders both expect and experience more responsibility than control; more blame than praise; and interpretations of failure – both their own and others’ – based more on personal fault than on situational or task complexity. We focus, therefore, on power asymmetry not in the sense of structural inequality between leaders and followers, but rather, as constellations of incongruity, imbalance and unevenness which circumscribe leaders’ actions, choices, relationships and feelings about their work. From this perspective, privilege and disadvantage are not polar opposites reflecting the powerful versus the powerless; instead, they are intimately interwoven within leadership experience. The asymmetries of police leadership involve an intermingling of the necessary and the impossible; a decoupling of failure from irresponsibility; resilience at the prospect of being blamed for success as readily as for failure; and containment of society’s unresolved crises of responsibility, anxiety and risk. We crystallise this as a paradox of transparency and occlusion – of openness and closedness – in which police leaders are scrutinised by, and answerable to, those whom they must also protect, including from having to bear the full burden of knowledge of the dangers of the world. We reflect on the implications of this not just within policing, but for critical understandings of the power of leadership more generally.

Toward a public service management: past, present, and future directions

Purpose

In providing a fine-grained analysis of public service management, the purpose of this paper is to make an important contribution to furthering research in service management, a body of literature that has tended to regard public services as homogenous or to neglect the context altogether.

Design/methodology/approach

Integrating public management and service management literatures, the past and present of public service management are discussed. Future directions for the field are outlined drawing on a service-dominant approach that has the potential to transform public services. Invited commentaries augment the review.

Findings

The review presents the Public Service Network Framework to capture the public value network in its abstraction and conceptualizes how value is created in public services. The study identifies current shortcomings in the field and offers a series of directions for future research where service management theory can contribute greatly.

Research limitations/implications

The review encourages service management research to examine the dynamic, diverse, and complex nature of public services and to recognize the importance of this context. The review calls for an interdisciplinary public service management community to develop, and to assist public managers in leveraging service logic.

Originality/value

The review positions service research in the public sector, makes explicit the role of complex networks in value creation, argues for wider engagement with public service management, and offers future research directions to advance public service management research.