Outcome Insights: Applying an NPG Lens to Examine a Capacity Building Initiative Among the Government and its Partner

ABSTRACT

Providing services for a diverse population requires a shift in paradigms and mechanisms. New Public Governance (NPG) provides insights on the need for collaborative actions between organizations from all sectors. This study applies an NPG lens to investigate a state’s effort to enhance mental health and substance use recovery through building capacity in peer-support service providing organizations (SPOs). We used 37 participant interviews from a training program. Results show variations between intended and actual outcomes and highlight NPG as a relevant framework for capacity building and co-creation of public value in dynamic partnerships between the public sector and SPOs.

KEYWORDS:

• New public governance
• evaluation
• outcomes
• public capacity building
• public service organizations

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Julia Van Patter for her help conducting interviews for this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The capacity institute is pseudo name for the actual program name, which was withheld to protect the state and SPO participants.

2. We acknowledge that partnerships can be arranged and function differently; however, since partnership is not the focus of this paper, we do not delve into this topic (Alford & O’Flynn, 2012).

Additional information

Funding

Funding was received from A state sponsor provided funding to facilitate training and program evaluation. Data used in this study are from the program evaluation. There are no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.