Coping With the Who’s, What’s and How’s of Co-Creation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.57765Keywords:
co-creation, coping strategies, local government, NorwayAbstract
This article argues that public managers aiming to implement co-creation initiatives must find ways of coping with the emerging conflicts that arise from the clashes with traditional forms of governance. In this article we study these coping strategies focussing on who becomes involved (who), what is the value one intends to create (what), and how is co-creation organized (how). The theoretical part of the paper develops a typology of coping strategies covering avoidance, separation, compromise and integration. The analysis of these coping strategies is based on data from a Norwegian research project where a project group has followed nine examples of co-creation over a longer period. The study shows that real-world co-creation struggles to live up to an idealized definition of co-creation, and the concluding part discusses both negative and positive interpretations of this finding.
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