Delivering Public Services: Time for a new theory?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 Of course, governance is by no means a new concept or focus for the public management research community. There has been a deal of substantive writing in this field for a number of years (Rhodes 1997 Rhodes, R. 1997. Understanding Governance, Buckingham: Open University Press. [Google Scholar]; Peters and Pierre 1998 Peters, G. and Pierre, J. 1998. Governance without Government? Rethinking Public Administration. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 8(2): 223–243. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Kooiman 1999 Kooiman, J. 1999. Social-Political Governance: Overview, Reflections and Design. Public Management, 1(1): 67–92. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]; Salamon 2002 Salamon, L. 2002. The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance, New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], to name but a few). What is new though, is its emergence as the dominant paradigm of public services delivery, where public policy making and implementation and intra-organizational management take place within this paradigm, rather than creating the conditions for inter-organizational governance. 2 This does not imply any active willingness to co-produce upon the behalf of the customer – simply that it is impossible to purchase a service without, in some way contributing to its co-production (Korkman 2006 Korkman, O. 2006. Customer Value Formation in Practice: A Practice-Theoretical Approach, Report A155, Helsinki: Hanken Swedish School of Economics. [Google Scholar]). This might be at a minimal level (by co-producing an insurance policy by inputting your personal details) or more holistically (by co-producing a vacation experience through your needs, desires and involvement in 'your' holiday). 3 This is not to say, of course that enduring relationships are always positive – sometimes they can tie service firms into relationships that are negative or prevent them from taking new directions. Relationship marketing is as much about knowing when to terminate relationships as about how to maintain them (Anderson and Jap 2005 Anderson, E. and Jap, S. 2005. The Dark Side of Relationships. Sloan Management Review, 46(Spring): 75–82. [Google Scholar]).