Evaluating and extending public service logic – introduction to the special issue

Introduction

This special issue of Public Management Review, Public Service Logic – Evaluation and Development, seeks both to evaluate the current body of Public Service Logic (PSL) knowledge and to further develop theory and tools for its practical application. Thanks to the hard work of reviewers, each of the six articles in this special issue contributes to those ends. Each reviewer is a noted scholar of PSL specifically, or of the broader public administration and management field. Their expertise sets high standards for manuscripts, which were evaluated for their contribution of knowledge to the discipline, for their application of knowledge to practice (de Ven and Andrew 1989; Whetten 1989; Graham, Kothari and Kreuter 2011), and for their explication of how the proposed advances of theory explain or predict actual experiences (Bacharach 1989).

In this editorial essay, we first address the significant themes of knowledge developed across articles, namely ecosystems, value, and user engagement. We then propose and justify future research directions linked to the scope of PSL, the role of value in PSL, and the application of PSL in practice.

Contribution of articles

The challenge of forming a theory that explicates and advances knowledge for the range of public services in various contexts is great. Commensurately, and helpfully, the articles in this special issue energetically drew on a wide range of contexts and public services. For instance, authors in this issue worked to ensure that evaluations of PSL contemplated contexts in both developing and the assumed developed countries (e.g. Kinder and Stenvall 2023). Other authors offer a range of PSL case studies, from a single municipal service (education) (Nasi and Choi 2023) to a bundle of typical municipal services provided by a London borough (Dudau et al. 2023), to four carbon reduction services in Edinburgh (Cui and Aulton, 2023), and to the Swedish sick leave insurance service (Gyllenhammar, Eriksson, and Löfgren 2023). This continuing heterogeneity of applications of PSL theory will help broaden and increase its take up across public services.

Ecosystems

The adoption of the ecosystem model into PSL theory (Engen et al. 2021; Osborne et al. 2022; Petrescu 2019) has improved its capacity to analyse matters relating to all actors involved in the service and increased understanding of the value perceived by each actor as they interact to affect the public service. Thus, it is unsurprising that the ecosystem model has facilitated much of the empirical research reported in this special issue. For example, the articles by Trischler, Røhnebæk, Edvardsson, and Tronvoll (2023) and Kinder and Stenvall (2023) examine the progression of PSL from a user-centred analytical lens to a service ecosystem lens in the study of value creation in public services. Using this broader public service ecosystem (PSE) lens, Gyllenhammar et al. (2023) investigate the impact of multiple actors, such as doctors and employment agencies outside the principal public service organization (PSO), upon value co-creation (or co-destruction) perceived by the service user. In contrast, Dudau, Stirbu, Petrescu, and Bocioaga (2023) explore the contribution of engagement by a London borough to value co-creation in multiple municipal services where users may also have the role of citizen co-creator, by interrogating the evidence as to perceived value across three dimensions of the value creation ecosystem, namely the council, residents, and developers. Taking another direction, Cui and Aulton (2023) further develop Osborne et al.’s (2022) three-level framework (individual, organizational, and societal) by establishing four categories of value that apply to all three levels. Their efforts result in a matrix of conceptualizations of value applying to a broad range of actors, including for-profit companies and not-for-profit organizations, as envisaged by the PSE lens.

Value

The six articles also have a strong focus on value, which is foundational in PSL theory and the ecosystem perspective (Engen et al. 2021; Osborne et al. 2022; Petrescu 2019), which has removed barriers (Dudau, Glennon, and Verschuere 2019) to exploring value beyond the dyadic interaction of the PSO and its users.

For example, Trischler and colleagues (2023) track the PSL treatment of value, providing a solid justification for the evolution from the user-centric focus of value evaluation to the ecosystem conceptualization. They emphasize the efficacy of the ecosystem as an analytical framework that can explain the unique instances of a specific service, and which better addresses the imbalance of interests of actors in networks (Verleye et al. 2017). However, Trischler and colleagues (2023) do not clarify whether the ecosystem as a tool can facilitate the analysis of value creation and destruction in the context of actors and stakeholders who are not involved in co-creation efforts.

Dudau et al. (2023) begin developing theory about the dimensions and characteristics of value perceived by a broader range of actors, including service users, service user citizens, service designers, and service providers in the context of municipal services. More specifically, they apply the lens of both private and public value to capture data on the citizen/user’s perception of the value they extract and contribute to, forming a model of value and related approaches to engagement. Value is depicted as a continuum between public and private, against which they array a continuum of engagement based on the intensity of engagement and uni/multi-dimensionality of the engagement approach, which best applies across the range of municipal services studied. Dudau et al. (2023) suggest that further research unpack the value perceptions of actors within a PSO, such as street-level service providers and contractors.

Cui and Aulton (2023) also advance our understanding of value within the PSL model. Specifically, they scaffold four categories of value on each level of Osborne’ et al. (2022) PSE three levels of value framework (individual, organizational, and societal). The four categories are based on the literature of services and marketing and public administration and management and include utilitarian/functional, hedonistic/aesthetical, relational/interactional, and epistemic/instrumental. They tested and refined these categories by gathering empirical evidence from practitioners from governmental, for-profit, and not-for-profit organizations, which formed the four Edinburgh community carbon reduction services. This confirmed the framework as likely to facilitate a deeper, more fine-grained analysis of value within a PSE through direct links to the established services and marketing and public administration and management knowledge.

Gyllenhammar et al. (2023) also explore the creation of value. Drawing on a study of the sick leave insurance service in Sweden and the multiplicity of actors involved, they assert the existence of more than one beneficiary and multiple (5) categories of actors from four PSOs. Their evidence explains how value is created (and destroyed) in interactions between frontline employees who represent multiple PSOs, and service beneficiaries. Applying the case study evidence to PSL theory, they form a hierarchy of beneficiaries ranging from the individual service user (first level) to society (fourth level), listing examples of value creation (and destruction) at each level.

Nasi and Choi (2023) present an innovative method of value assessment to determine which of the services delivered by a particular municipality would be the focus of empirical research. Specifically, they developed an online survey asking respondents to rank (on a scale of 1 to 7) both the importance of and satisfaction with each service. That survey instrument and service value ranking method identified education as a service having the greatest shortfall in user perceptions as to value delivered compared with importance. This instrument and method present a suitable foundational tool for similar service research by scholars seeking to focus on the particular service/s that the users consider important to them.

In contrast with the focus of those articles, which was the extension and development of existing PSL theory, Kinder and Stenvall (2023) present a vigorous criticism of PSL as having a disproportionate focus on subjective perceptions of value by the user, which they attribute to the reliance of PSL scholars upon the works of Vargo and Lusch (Lusch and Vargo 2014; Vargo and Lusch 2008; Vargo, Maglio, and Archpru Akaka 2008). According to Kinder and Stenvall (2023), PSL should make a ‘clean break’ from Vargo and Lusch’s marketing approach to value co-creation.

Engagement

Two articles focus on engaging actors that use services in co-creating value. Both draw on quantitative and qualitative evidence from municipal services to advance theory and provide engagement tools useful to PSL theorists and municipal managers.

First, Nasi and Choi (2023) reasoned that if the service provider takes up a user-centric service logic, then the provider has made a strategic-level decision to adopt a citizen orientation, which requires specific practical approaches and techniques for engaging service users. They also advocate routinizing the use of design theory in the co-design of service ideas and solutions. Design theory provides tools and tactics that help users and stakeholders build knowledge about the problem and its context, stimulate engagement, and foster creativity, which in turn can help (re)create a feasible service that meets the needs of all actors and stakeholders. Using a sample of citizen service users of a southern European municipality, they explain how such methods and tools can be applied to heighten the user value derived from the co-design and co-production processes. This explication of user engagement as a value co-creation strategy significantly extends the benefit of PSL to service designers, managers, and street-level bureaucrats by demonstrating tools and techniques that can be applied in public service renewal and innovation.

Second, Dudau et al. (2023)analyse the value conditions necessary within the ecosystem for the different forms of engagement to be effective. These perceptions of value, both private and public, are presented as a continuum and laid out against a spectrum of options for engagement, arrayed according to the intensity of the engagement effort on the part of the PSO. This reality-based framework of the value/engagement trade-off is potentially useful for practitioners seeking to increase the effectiveness of municipal services. It will also assist scholars seeking to further unpack the symbiosis of the multiple roles of the citizen service user in the municipal PSE context.

Future research directions

As Editors of this special issue on Public Service Logic – Evaluation and Development, we believe the development of a comprehensive, beneficial body of theory about public services is massive and time-consuming but is necessary for societal advancement. We also believe that the most significant benefits to society will come from research that expands the scope of PSL, the role of value in PSL, and the application of PSL in practice.

The scope of PSL

The scope of PSL is likely to burgeon, both in terms of the range of actors and the range of services.

First, in terms of the range of actors, the uptake of the ecosystem model by PSL theorists, especially in this special issue, reflects the understanding that the actors involved in PSL go beyond the user/service provider dyad. Yet, scholarship has not defined the boundaries as to what other actors should be included in the PSL model. This is an important area of research. One possible path is the exploration of the distinctions between the term actor and the term stakeholder as to the nuanced nature of involvement and engagement appropriate for the achievement of value for each. Such research might be informed by recent work on conceptualizing actor and stakeholder engagement by Hollebeek, Kumar, and Srivastava (2022).

Regardless of their role, actors can decide on the perspectives they will use to inform their decision-making on issues. However, the application of any perspective on any issue rests on decision-makers having requisite knowledge. Thus, if NPM perspectives are to be displaced by PSL tenets, as many advocates desire, then actors must have knowledge about PSL that is appropriate to their roles. This is particularly important for political and governmental leaders who serve as decision-makers and advisors (Keast 2021). Thus, scholars could undertake research to learn what perspectives inform current thinking, as well as what actors do and do not know about PSL.

Moreover, scholars should seek to understand the impact of values and norms and the interchanging and multiple roles of ecosystem actors. We support the call by Trischler and colleagues (2023) for research that builds an understanding of the role of PSOs in mediating competing individual and public values. Such knowledge would aid the design and operationalization of services that bring true value to ecosystem actors and stakeholders and may be generalizable to other management disciplines where the body of knowledge as to ecosystems that are social in nature is also in development.

Second, regarding the range of services, PSL scholars have mostly explored PSOs owned and/or funded by the governments. Yet, service commissioning is specified in the PSL model, and Cui and Aulton (2023) derive evidence as to value from case studies that involve for-profit and not-for-profit actors, reminding us that many public services may be funded by the government but delivered by for-profit, not-for-profit and hybrid form actors. Indeed, in the public management literature public services and service delivery organizations are conceptualized quite widely. For example, Harris (2010) observes that in the UK context of services for people experiencing vulnerability, the term public services was taken to mean not only services directly provided by the government but rather all services that receive government funding or whose provision serves a governmental goal, regardless of sector.

Contemplating Harris’s (2010) conceptualization of public services, there is the possibility of private-for-profit organizations providing a service directly to members of the public and meeting a government goal, say a bus company providing safe, convenient travel to society. Research in which societies are seen as beneficiaries of value co-creation practices has been identified as an important direction for the service management literature (Zeithaml et al. 2020) offering significant possibility of a quite broad perspective as to the beneficiaries of services which may assist public management scholars seeking to understand the impact of a public value perspective on the scope of PSL. What boundary conditions might there be to qualify a service for a PSL approach? Is there something in the public service context that requires the expanded scope that PSL reflects?

The role of value in PSL

The expansion of the PSL model to recognize the comprehensive range of service ecosystem actors creates the need for knowledge about the perception of the value of each and how that value is created (and destroyed). Further, we note that PSL theory has developed around models or actual case studies where the actors are actively involved in an interchange and co-create value. However, categories of actors and stakeholders who are not present in the public service interaction exist. These may be future generations or individuals whose interests may be encompassed within the concept of public value, or individuals whose current physical, psychiatric, or psychological circumstances dictate that service providers deliver stewardship of their interests all require services to meet their evolving needs.

Authors in this special issue have contributed strongly to the development of theory and practical tools concerning the value perceived by certain additional categories of actors, beyond the PSO/user dyad. One article examined a service ecosystem that featured multiple service provider organizations and multiple professionals as decision-makers, identifying value destruction caused by the highly specified roles and values, setting the foundation for research as to value creation and destruction between PSOs. Such research should continue to form a comprehensive understanding of value in public services, ensuring knowledge about the value perceived by each category of actors and stakeholders in the public service ecosystem. Moreover, the success of the PSL model is likely to depend on the inclusion of all interested parties because every actor or stakeholder, ranging from service users to legislators, to street-level bureaucrats, and beyond, will typically want to see the value proposition relating to their own role, before engaging with the other tenets of PSL.

PSL scholars, including several in this special issue, have touched on the responsibility of PSOs to future generations when exploring the necessity for balancing individual value for the service user against public value. The public value characteristic of public services is an umbrella concept that encompasses both services where the service user is fully able to represent their own interests, and those where the service user is unable to do so because of vulnerability or absence from the service provider–user interaction, as is sometimes the case with services that provide a long-term public good. Bennington (2011) defines a long-term public good as the continuation of the provision of public value for the whole community, including generations yet unborn. Long-term public goods may include, for example, the stewardship of the environment, the health care system, or critical infrastructures. In addition, individuals, including those yet to be born, may have rights to specific items of property to be exercised in the future and public services of a stewardship nature, such as indigenous land title systems, guardianship services and custodial functions of courts and governments are provided to protect those rights.

Building upon the importance of stewardship, we suggest that further research should go beyond the value-in-use tenet inherited from SDL. Instead, future research may benefit from developing a logic that recognizes the responsibility of public services to those who are not able to represent their own interests now or our future generations. Such research should also be open to the possibility of generating a better understanding of whether these public goods and stewardship roles are characteristics which distinguish PSL from service logics applied in domains other than public services.

Applying PSL to practice

Many conversations between the Editors involved efforts to relate theory (or purported theory) to practice, for example, how a user or legislator or PSO professional would view the concept or how PSO professionals would implement it in practice. Such take up of a service logic in practice for public services is happening now. For example, the Australian Productivity Commission (SCRGSP, 2023) in 2016 adopted a formal service logic for assessing the performance of all services of all governments across Australia, focusing strongly on the service outcome, and the service objective. The Auditor-General of the State of Victoria (2021) dedicates an initial foundational section of the Measuring and Reporting on Service Delivery report to a detailed explication of the Productivity Commission’s service logic model and its role in public services delivery and measurement.

Moving from measurement to design and delivery of services, we know that legislators and central agencies as key actors in public service delivery, need to be confident that service logic will provide the intended benefits and can be implemented in practice. Put simply, key decision-makers will require a robust public service theory that can be safely ‘rolled out’ across each service. The roll out requires materials and techniques that ensure that fundamental concepts such as service and value are communicated, adopted, and implemented.

Therefore, the further building of PSL as a theory founded in empirical evidence is a need characterized by urgency. Most importantly, that theory must be supported by a comprehensive range of fully credible tools that facilitate the implementation of PSL in practice, addressing such matters of practice such as policies, systems, procedures, training, and development of a service capability.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Mills

David Mills is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in School of Management, QUT Business School. He has more than 20 years of experience in policy, governance, and public services delivery. David’s doctoral studies addressed the stewardship performance of private and hybrid service providers in privatized critical infrastructures. His research and publications have focused on capacities necessary to implement smart city prescriptions to city infrastructures and services and the obstacles to, and solutions for, service delivery by regional local governments.

Maria Cucciniello

Maria Cucciniello is Associate Professor at Bocconi University within the Department of Social and Political Sciences. Her research focuses on transparency, behavioural public administration and service design oriented to citizen engagement and value creation.

Robyn Keast

Robyn Keast is a Professor in the Faculty of Business, Law and Arts, Southern Cross University, who primarily studies networked arrangements and collaborative practices in both social and physical infrastructure domains. She publishes in public administration and public/social policy journals and regularly contributes to industry publications and blogs. With colleagues, Keast co-authored Negotiation in Different Governance Modes (2011), Social Procurement and New Public Governance (2016) and was co-editor for Network Theory in the Public Sector (2014); Networks and Collaborative Arrangements in the Public Sector: Essential Research Approaches, Methodologies and Analytical Tools (2019); Governing Complexity in Times of Turbulence (2023) and A Modern Guide to Networks (2023).

Tina Nabatchi

Tina Nabatchi is the Joseph A. Strasser Endowed Professor in Public Administration at the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where she also directs the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration. Her research focuses on participatory and collaborative governance, conflict resolution, and challenges in public administration.

Katrien Verleye

Katrien Verleye is a Professor of Service Innovation and Research Coordinator at the Center for Service Intelligence – Ghent University. Within the domain of service innovation, her main research interests relate to actor engagement and value co-creation in networks/ecosystems and servitization in the circular economy. She published her research in service, innovation, and marketing journals and serves the editorial boards of Journal of Service Management, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Service Theory and Practice, and Journal of Business Research.