‘Good stories get lost in bureaucracy!’ Cultural biases and information for co-production

ABSTRACT

This paper is about evidencing the social value of co-produced public services. We use Mary Douglas's theory of cultural variation to frame conflicting assumptions about what kinds of information count as good and reliable. With its emphasis on active participation, equality and mutual decision-making, co-production fits what Douglas called an ‘egalitarian’ worldview. It aligns well with local, contextual, experiential forms of information such as storytelling. Yet in present-day public services, alternatives favour individual choice, hierarchical rules, or chance outcomes. It is comfortable but ineffective to share only information that meets the preferences of one worldview and fails to respond to others.

IMPACT

The idea of co-production attracts passionate advocates, many of them practitioners. To further advance co-production and counter objections, information for evidence of its value is essential but there is little consensus on what counts as legitimate information. The authors draw practical learning from the struggles of a social enterprise prominent in co-production to improve its information gathering and presentation. Contextualized forms of information, such as stories of lived experience, reflect many practitioners’ understanding of co-production. Stories can be mobilized with great success but it may nevertheless be counter-productive to shun other information resources that meet the preferences of diverse stakeholders.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-creation
• Douglasian cultural theory
• grid and group
• hybrid organizations
• multi-agency
• social care
• social enterprise
• social value

Acknowledgements

The content of the paper reflects the authors’ views and the managing agency cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

We are grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding the placement mentioned this paper as a third sector and university partnership, award number ES/I030239/1. The ideas were further developed during project entitled ‘Co-creation of Service Innovation in Europe (CoSIE)'. CoSIE received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 770492.