Reshaping the Hybrid Role of Public Servants: Identifying the Opportunity Space for Co-production and the Enabling Skills Required by Professional Co-producers

Abstract

This chapter starts by introducing how the public sector has adopted different governance metatrends during the last century and how the adoption of these metatrends over time has led to new, hybrid roles for service users and frontline staff. The focus in this chapter is dedicated to the changing roles of the frontline staff and especially the role ascribed to them as professional co-producers. The premise is that professional co-producers must build their capacity to navigate in the local co-production context that is a hybrid of the Old Public Administration, New Public Management, and New Public Governance. This complex, hybrid context is framed in the chapter as “the opportunity space for co-production.” The problem is that this opportunity space represents an arena in which there is potential for the creation of “double or triple pressure” on the professional co-producers because they are expected to handle top-down and bottom-up expectations simultaneously – and perhaps also horizontal pressures stemming from the expectations of staff from other organizations (interorganizational collaborations). The argument is that professional co-producers must build their capacity to navigate in this dynamic context, acting together with service users and members from other organizations.