Mixing of roles between professionals, volunteers and service users creates a new, complex environment in which to produce and deliver public services. In this kind of environment, the issues of accountability become ever more important. This article presents a qualitative case study of co-production between volunteers and professionals in the legally regulated restorative justice services in Finland. Theoretically, we draw together the concept of citizen co-production with the literature on street-level bureaucracy and accountability. As a result of the study, we can say that co-production between volunteers and professionals increases accountability ties. In particular, the meaning of process-centred accountability is salient in horizontal accountability relations. Thus, co-production as a governance arrangement changes the working culture of public service professionals. In the new partnerships, although not entirely horizontal, we can recognize a seed for cultural change for professionalized public service organizations. Points for practitionersIn this article we have researched co-production between professionals and volunteers in a legally regulated public service, the conciliation service, examining the perceptions of accountability in the frontline practices. The results show that the process-centred nature of the co-produced services leaves less room for discretion and the application of rules by individual street-level workers. Furthermore, as the service users do not consider volunteers to be part of the authority, co-production might be smoother. This is significant especially in the social services, where the clients per se are not necessarily motivated to co-produce, but where co-production would be essential for achieving effective service outcomes.
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The extant literature has identified five problems related to public sector organisations and their reputation management: politics, consistency, charisma, uniqueness and excellence. This study examines whether and how the problems of reputation management occur in public higher education by collecting qualitative data from 40 interviews. The study sheds light on the perceptions of a group that has been largely neglected in previous studies: namely, doctorates who have exited academia, or ex-academics. In addition to ex-academics, interviewees also included their employers and university leadership. The analysis follows a thematic qualitative approach with an abductive logic. The study provides empirical evidence of the content of the problems in higher education and discusses recent related transformations in higher education. The findings show that, in terms of reputation management, the most challenging matters appear to be knowledge transfer and the applicability of research to practice. These challenges are cross-cutting and apparent from different angles across all five problems of reputation management. This study contributes to the academic literature on reputation management in the public sector by applying prior conceptual categorizations and employing a comprehensive set of empirical data with a fresh perspective. The study presents implications for higher education policy makers and managers and emphasises the need for university management to minimise the duality between different types of workers, as this duality threatens university reputations in general and consistency in particular.
The purpose of this study is to further our understanding of dilemmas facing the third mission of universities. Through this dilemma-related information, we aim to provide paths for universities to reconcile these dilemmas and adopt a more holistic approach to university marketing. In so doing, we revisit Bthe shotgun wedding of industry and academia^(Hampden-Turner 1990, pp. 201-221). The dilemmas detected in this study revolve around two pairs, namely: BHighlighting intrinsic value of research vs. highlighting instrumental value of research^and Bfocusing on international scientific publications vs. focusing on popularization of science^. More than 700 verbal answers given by Finnish doctorates to one pair of open-ended questions were qualitatively contentanalysed. As its main novelty, the study adopts dilemma approach and focuses on perceptions of the neglected group of doctorates who have exited academia. The study suggests that universities adopt a more holistic marketing approach by devoting more effort to strengthening stakeholder relationships and co-production and improving science communication and related incentives.
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