‘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. IMPACTThe 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. We draw practical learning from the struggles of a social enterprise prominent in co-production to improve its information gathering and presentation. Contextualised forms of information such as stories of lived experience reflect many practitioners' understanding of co-production.Stories can be mobilised with great success, but it may nevertheless be counterproductive to shun other information resources that meet the preferences of diverse stakeholders.

Co-creation in Public Services for Innovation and Social Justice

“…Although this touches upon the academic 'paradigm wars' previously mentioned it goes much deeper. It recognises that fundamentally different 'worldviews' coexist in multi-agency, cross-sector public service environments (Baines et al, 2023). These tensions were repeatedly played out within CoSIE, as illustrated in the following examples.…”

“…A key lesson from CoSIE is the importance in such complex, multifaceted public service environments of being open to many forms of evaluation evidence, and the positive benefits from entering into constructive dialogue about them. It is comfortable but ineffective to rely only on forms of evidence that meet the preferences of some groups but fail to respond to the interests and concerns of others (Baines et al, 2023).…”