Engaging Public Sector Clients: From Service-Delivery to Co-Production

Delivering better services to clients has become a watchword of public management, but its proponents miss a critical aspect: they neglect the important role clients themselves play in co-producing public services. This means more than simply participating in decisions or giving feedback about programs: it entails clients contributing time and effort to delivering services. Exploring three rich cases (postal customers, long-term unemployed, and taxpayers) across the US, UK and Australia, this book analyses firstly when it makes sense for public agencies to try to harness clients' co-production, and secondly how organizations can better elicit this work from them, by providing good client service and appealing to their intrinsic needs and social values. It also suggests how organizations can better equip themselves to tap client co-production. In the process it challenges many of our assumptions about how government can relate to the public it serves.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Client Co-Production of Public Services The Co-Production Concept Clients in the Public Sector Legal Compliance, Regulation and Co-Production Theoretical Constructs and Methodology Postal Service Customers as Co-Producers Long-Term Unemployed People as Co-Producers Taxpayers as Co-Producers Client Co-Production: An Exchange Perspective Managing for Client Co-Production Implications

About the Author :
JOHN ALFORD is Professor of Public Sector Management at the Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne, Australia and also at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, Australia. His research and publications are on organization-client relationships, public sector strategy and inter-organizational collaboration.

Review :
'In this controversial but illuminating work, Alford has not only bitten off, but thoroughly chewed over and digested a critically important but widely ignored aspect of public management: the processes that government agencies rely on to engage the clients to whom they deliver services, and on whom they impose obligations.' - Mark Moore, Harvard Kennedy School, author of Creating Public Value 'Co-production has moved to the centre of debates about public service reform, and its importance is bound to rise... John Alford's book is a masterly survey of the field, fusing history, evidence and analysis. He brings to the fore how fascinating, and difficult, co-production can be.' - Geoff Mulgan, Head of the Young Foundation, former head of Demos and adviser to PM Tony Blair, author of Good and Bad Power