Citizen agency in value co-creation
processes – a literature review
Kaisa Kurkela and Salla Maijala
School of Management, University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland
Sanna Tuurnas
School of Management, University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland and
Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland, and
Harri Jalonen
School of Management, University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to address citizen agency in value co-creation (VCC) in the context of public
administration. It asks how citizen agency is presented in the VCC discussion to deepen the understanding of
VCC as a dynamic interplay between public organisations and citizens adopting various forms of agency.
Design/methodology/approach – This study utilises the integrative literature review method, applying a two-
round search process. Altogether, 40 scientific articles were subjected to content analysis to acquire a deeper
understanding of citizen agency.
Findings – The VCC discussion represents citizens as resource integrators, experiencers, co-producers and
beneficiaries. In addition, the study raises the questions of activity and voluntariness and the level of
involvement linked to citizen agency in VCC. The connection between the VCC discussion and collective-side
citizen activity is weak because the democratic aspects of the discussion are limited.
Research limitations/implications – This article contributes to the VCC discussion by painting a clear picture
of citizen agency, which is also linked to the democratic essence and potential of VCC. It also identifies the
potential weaknesses of the VCC conceptual debate.
Originality/value – This article sheds light on citizen agency in the context of the VCC discussion, which is an
understudied issue in public administration research. The present study helps to enhance the discussion
concerning the democratic potential of VCC.
Keywords Value co-creation, Public values, Citizen agency
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Interest in citizen participation and democratic innovations has increased in recent decades.
There is a growing trend highlighting citizen agency in delivering better service outcomes
(Acar et al., 2023). The evolution of different citizen roles is connected to the fact that despite
their development timeline, public administration paradigms occur simultaneously and
overlap. Contemporary public administration paradigms have identified various citizen roles,
including voter, beneficiary, patient, client, customer, service user, partner, co-producer and
co-creator, but citizen agency goes beyond predefined roles, encompassing the ability to
initiate, negotiate and influence co-creation outcomes (e.g. Thomas, 2013; van Eijk and Steen,
2022). Citizens can also adopt a more critical role in relation to public administration by
becoming activists, who play an important role in terms of the functions of the democratic
system and highlight citizens’ self-deployment (van Eijk and Steen, 2022). Simultaneously,
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© Kaisa Kurkela, Salla Maijala, Sanna Tuurnas and Harri Jalonen. Published by Emerald Publishing
Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone
may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and
non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full
terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
This article was developed in collaboration with research project funded by the Social Insurance
Institution of Finland (KELA) and the project Implementing Democratic Innovations (STRONG) funded
by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland (No. 365620).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0951-3558.htm
Received 26 June 2024
Revised 12 November 2024
21 January 2025
Accepted 2 February 2025
International Journal of Public Sector
Management
Emerald Publishing Limited
e-ISSN: 1758-6666
p-ISSN: 0951-3558
DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-06-2024-0203
there is growing research interest in value co-creation (VCC; e.g. Cluley and Radnor, 2021;
Osborne, 2018). The central premises are that value cannot be merely delivered to citizens by
public service organisations (PSOs) and that citizens play a crucial role in the process (Osborne
et al., 2016). Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of this role remains elusive.
This article provides an overview of VCC and connects it with the public administration
research discussion on various citizen roles. Focusing specifically on VCC, we recognise the
multiplicity of concepts around it, such as co-creation and citizen co-production,whichmay be
used simultaneously and be complementary (e.g. Palumbo, 2016).
We also note that a wide stream of literature focusing on co-creation and co-production has
observed their relation to, for example, highlighting the importance of democratic issues
(e.g. Ansell et al., 2023; Turnhout et al., 2020).We view the “co-paradigm” as a key element in
addressing the challenges confronting public sector organisations: diminishing trust, citizens’
worries about the “value for money” in public services and the strain of public sector austerity
(Dudau et al., 2019). However, the general co-paradigm is so inclusive that the “what”, “who”
and “how” – questions related to co-production and co-creation – spread in several analytical
directions (Nabachi et al., 2017). While co-creation and co-production refer to various forms
and encounters between citizens and public service or policy processes, VCC highlights the
client–service provider nexus, where VCC becomes “an inalienable component of public
service delivery that places the experiences and knowledge of the service user at the heart of
the effective public service design and delivery” (Osborne et al., 2013, p. 146). In contrast to
co-creation and co-production processes, which may be citizen-initiated activities, VCC
focuses more on the process of interaction that either creates or destroys value, even in the
absence of active consent to participate in the process. This article focuses specifically on the
VCC discussion to extend the understanding of the issue.
The recent discussion has overlooked the profound consideration of citizen agency in VCC
(e.g. Osborne, 2018), and there is a lack of a profound understanding of and theoretical focus
on citizen agency that clearly gathers different viewpoints together. This defective picture of
citizens’ roles and agency is even more complicated because VCC, in practice, can include a
wide range of processes.
This integrative literature review article aims to bridge the aforementioned gap by
answering the following research question: How is citizens’ agency presented in the VCC
discussion? In the present study, we observe agency through Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998,
p. 970) definition: as the temporally constructed engagement by actors of different structural
environments – the temporal-relational contexts of action – which, through the interplay of
habit, imagination, and judgement, both reproduces and transforms those structures in
interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical situations.
This article aims to deepen the understanding of the dynamic interplay between public
organisations and citizens in their various roles in service encounters inwhich value creation is
an inalienable element of the service process as value-in-use (see Vargo and Lusch, 2008). We
argue that scrutinising citizen agency also contributes to the democratic essence and potential
of VCC. By broadening the scope of citizen agency inVCC beyond the individual service user
position, we can identify the potential weak points of the VCC conceptual debate.
Practical and policy implications highlight the importance of paying close attention even
to micro-level interactions between citizens and professionals as critical moments of
value creation not only on the individual level but also on the organisational and institutional
levels.
Regarding the structure of this article,we first briefly introduce the reader to the premises of
the VCC discussion. Second, we describe the data search and analysis process and provide an
overview of the 40 reviewed articles. Third, we present the analysis results by providing an
overview of citizen roles and then introducing six categories that arose from the data. Finally,
we discuss the results and conclude the article by introducing future research propositions and
managerial implications.
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The role of citizens in value co-creation
The VCC discussion originates from research concerning private sector actors, partially
explaining how citizen roles are perceived in it. The central idea of VCC for a citizen is often
that of a service user at the centre of service processes. In contrast, in goods-dominant logic,
value creation is seen as a process in which the service user’s activity or contribution is
irrelevant. Value is created as a result of a production process (value-in-exchange). Service-
dominant logic (SDL) emphasises that value is realised only in the service user’s life, when
they use the service (value-in-use; Vargo and Lusch, 2008). Therefore, the service’s value
cannot be captured by the service’s characteristics because the perceived value is situationally
dependent (Osborne, 2018). The service user creates value either by using the service in their
own way (value creation) or by sharing the creation process with service providers (VCC;
Osborne et al., 2021).
VCC is central to public service logic (PSL), which introduces the ideals of SDL into the
public sector context. In PSL, service user individuality and the experiential nature of service
value are central (Osborne, 2020). PSL holds that a PSO cannot produce value by itself but can
only create value offerings to co-create value with service users. PSL also recognises the
ecosystemic nature of public services formed by different operators and service entities that
aim to meet the expectations of service users while creating public value (Osborne, 2018;
Osborne et al., 2022; Trischler et al., 2023).
Although VCC places citizens at the centre by making it possible for them to define the
value of a service, the picture of citizen agency is unclear.While the viewpoints of practitioners
and service organisations are often emphasised (e.g. Cui andAulton, 2023), understanding the
various citizen roles in VCC processes is key to understanding the democratic potential of
VCC. Against this background, the present study integrates different perspectives concerning
citizen agency. Thus, by drawing a comprehensive picture, this study adds to the theoretical
discussion on VCC in the public administration context, which we see as evenmore emergent.
Therefore, the present study also contributes more widely to the discussion of the evolution of
citizen roles in that context.
Methods
Conducting literature review
The VCC discussion originated from research concentrating on the private sector and
emphasising the citizen role of a customer or client of certain services. Against this
background, the present study draws attention to citizens’ forms of agency in relation to public
administration and services, which, at least in principle, are democratically governed.
Methodically, the present study adopts an integrative literature review method
(e.g. Whittemore and Knafl, 2005) to build a synthesis and examine citizen roles and
agency. The review integrates studies with various methodological approaches from different
public policy fields and includes both empirical and conceptual studies. The review is also
descriptive because it aims to determine how different definitions manifest in the existing
VCC literature. We consider this process of data search and analysis an iterative process that
may be shaped by notions derived from the analysis.
The data search and analysis process, described in detail in Table 1, started with the
formulation of the search statement. After some test searches, we noticed that the number of
articles discussing VCC in public administration journals would be limited. In addition, we
found many terms pertaining to citizens (e.g. “service users”, “patients”, “beneficiaries” and
“customers”). For these two reasons, we decided to create a general search statement and then
manually screen each article if they discussed citizen agency and VCC from some viewpoint.
The search statement “co-creation of value” OR “value co-creation” was applied to theWeb of
Science, Ebsco andScopus databases.Generally, important criteria for inclusionwere a focus on
scientific articles in public administration research, connection toVCCand connection to citizen
roles. For the quality of the study, we decided to exclude journals that were suspected to be
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Table 1. Data search process
First round of data search and screening
Identification
Database search (full text): “co-creation of value” OR “value co-creation”
Web of science n 5 106
Business Source Premier (EBSCO)
n 5 58
Scopus n 5 46
Records identified n 5 210
Limitations for the search
- Journal articles
- Written in English
- The research area of public administration
Screening
Records after duplicates removed
n 5 128
Records screened on titles
- Records excluded n 5 52
- Records included n 5 76
Exclusion criteria
- If not journal article (e.g. editorials excluded)
- If journal not addressing the field of public administration
Eligibility
Records screened on abstracts
- Records excluded n 5 22
- Records included n 5 54
Exclusion criteria
- If suspected as predator journal
- If having slim or non-existent connection to value co-creation
- If article not addressing public administration
Records screened on full texts
- Full-text articles excluded
n 5 28
- Records included in the final
review n 5 26
Exclusion criteria
- If having slim or non-existent connection to value co-creation
- If not addressing the role of citizens
Second round of data search (after the analysis of first round’s results)
Identification
Database search (full text): (“co-production” OR “co-creation”) AND value
Web of Science n 5 180
EBSCOhost Ultimate 5 99
Scopus 5 63
Records identified n 5 342
Limitations for the search
- Journal articles
- Written in English
- The research area of public administration
Screening
Records after duplicates removed
n 5 224
Records screened on titles
- Records excluded n 5 99
- Records included n 5 125
Exclusion criteria
- If not journal article (e.g. editorials excluded)
- If journal not addressing the field of public administration
- If involved in the first round of database search
Eligibility
Records screened on abstracts
- Records excluded n 5 72
- Records included n 5 53
Exclusion criteria
- if no access to article
- If having slim or non-existent connection to value co-creation/value co-
production in the context of public administration (PA)
- If not published in the same time period than the 1st round
- If suspected predator journal
Records screened on full texts
- Full-text articles excluded
n 5 39
- Records included in the final
review n 5 14
Exclusion criteria
- If having slim or non-existent connection to value co-creation/value co-
production
- If not addressing the role of citizens
Altogether 40 reviewed articles, of which 13 can be defined as conceptual, and 27 as studies with clear empirical example
PublicManagement Review (22), Journal of Public Sector Management (2), the Journal of Nonprofit and Public Sector
Marketing (2), PublicMoney andManagement (4), the Australian Journal of Public Administration (2), the International
Journal of Healthcare Management (1), the International Journal of Public Administration (2) and Public Policy and
Administration (2), Perspectives on PublicManagement andGovernance (1), Policy and Politics (1) andAdministration
and Society (1)
Source(s): Authors’ own work
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predatory journals [1]. After the initial processes of title screening and estimation of eligibility
(by reviewing the abstracts and full texts), we ended up with 26 articles for further analysis.
After the initial analysis, we noticed that the terms “value co-production” or “co-production
of value” also pertain to VCC. This realisation seems logical because of the similarity and
interconnectedness of the two concepts (see Osborne et al., 2016). Against this background,
and to ensure the validity of the present study, we decided to run another round of
database search, supplementing the previous round by adding articles using the term “value
co-production” to the review. This also made it possible for us to test the validity of the
first-round search statement. In the second database search round, we used the search
statement “(‘co-production’ OR ‘co-creation’) AND value”. The second round followed the
same phases and criteria of exclusion and inclusion (see Table 1) as the first round, providing
us with 14 additional articles for the final review. Altogether, we reviewed 40 research articles
[2], 13 of which can be defined as conceptual and 27 as studies with clear empirical examples.
Many of the empirical studies dealt with one policy field, while some dealt with more than
one policy field. The following fields were dealt with in the studies: healthcare or public health
(14 studies), social services (2), children and youth services (2), employment services
(2), environment (2), community development (2), safety (2), public legal services (1), social
insurance and security (2), tax agencies (1) and public sector strategic development
(1). The journal Public Management Review, with 22 articles, stood out as the major outlet for
VCC discussion in the public sector context (see Table 1).
The aforementioned search process had some limitations. For example, it might have left
out articles that do in fact discussVCCbut use other terms for it. In addition, limiting the search
to public administration journals only may have resulted in the exclusion of some articles that
consider public administration cases but were published in journals concerning some other
academic fields. However,we consider this limitation justified due to our aimof understanding
citizen agency, particularly in the field of public administration, and the search process that we
used enabled us to do exactly this.
For analysing the articles, we applied content analysis with a descriptive approach to
acquire a deeper understanding of citizen roles and unveil the agency within them. The coding
was assisted by NVivo software. With an aim for finding descriptions concerning the citizen
agency, in the first round we coded notions concerning the diverse roles (citizen, customer,
service user, patient, etc.) in VCC processes, which were later divided to subcategories and
main categories (see Table 2). In the second round, the additional data were coded, and the
analysis was supplemented by views arising from the additional data.
Despite the basic structure of the categories emerging during the first round of analysis, the
structure of the categories developed throughout the analysis process, finally taking formwith
the following main categories: resource integrator, experiencer, beneficiary and co-producer.
In addition, two dimensions were found for these forms of agency: (1) activity and
voluntariness and (2) level of VCC (individual or public).
Results
Integrating the perspectives concerning the roles of citizens
The basic idea of VCC is that the eventual value will be determined and co-created by the
citizens and reflected in their own life experiences (e.g. Eriksson et al., 2020; Hardyman et al.,
2015; Hardyman et al., 2019; Petrescu, 2019). Another typical description concerning the
agency is as a co-producer who, on the one hand, takes part in public service production by
offering their resources (e.g. knowledge) but, on the other hand, also has some responsibility in
creating the service and its value (see, e.g. Alford, 2014, 2016; Larsson and Skjølsvik, 2023;
Williams et al., 2016).
In addition to the term “citizen”, the terms “patient”, “service user”, “customer”,
“beneficiary” and “client” are used in the reviewed articles. Especially in empirical articles,
citizens represent different positions, some of which more or less depict vulnerability, such as
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“homeless people” (Farr, 2016), “residents of public housing in derelict neighbourhoods”
(Vanleene et al., 2020), “unemployed people with disabilities” (Best et al., 2019), “refugee
children” (Lindqvist andWestrup, 2020), “young people” in social welfare services (Rossi and
Tuurnas, 2021), “elderly people” (Eriksson et al., 2020; Jaspers and Steen, 2019; McMullin,
2023) and “patients” in different healthcare services (Eriksson et al., 2023; Hardyman et al.,
2015; Loeffler andBovaird, 2019). Furthermore, some citizens are observed as people close to
service users, such as parents of schoolchildren or family carers (Jenhaug, 2021; Komulainen
et al., 2023; Nasi and Choi, 2023; Osei-Frimpong and Owusu-Frimpong, 2017; Skarli, 2023).
As theVCCdiscussion illustratesmanifold citizen roles, it recognises that citizens can play
different roles in relation to PSOs simultaneously (Saha and Goyal, 2021), which can also
evolve (Best et al., 2019). For example, Komulainen et al. (2023) describe a patient’s role in
the service provider sphere, where value creation concerns medical procedures, but in the
patient’s sphere it includes preventive action and self-care. In a joint service provider–patient
sphere, these two dimensions can be interconnected. Some of the reviewed articles also present
citizens engaging in value creation in different kinds of co-productive or co-creative processes
in their communities, such as in community development projects, enhancing public safety or
in local regeneration processes (Dudau et al., 2023; Kitchener et al., 2023; Vanleene et al.,
2020;Williams et al., 2016) orwithin public service production contexts in healthcare services
and in elderly and social care (Eriksson et al., 2023; Jaspers andSteen, 2019;McMullin, 2023).
In empirical articles, VCC is also observed in processes that takes inter-organisational
perspectives and collaboration. In some of the reviewed articles, collaboration take place
Table 2. Categories of analysis
Main categories Sub categories
Forms of agency Citizens as resource
integrators
Citizens bringing and exchanging their resources to VCC
Citizen producing and sharing knowledge
Citizens having sleeping resources
Citizens’ skills and competences as a resource
Citizens as experiencers Citizens co-producers by their experiences
Citizens experiencing and having emotions in the services
Citizens experiencing the service system
Heterogenous needs, experiences and lifeworlds
Citizens as co-producers Citizens co-producing the services
Citizens acting as co-innovators
Citizens acting as co-designer
Citizen acting as partner or collaborator or participant
Citizens volunteering or acting as peer-support
Citizens as beneficiaries Citizens’ equal access to services
Citizens supported or assisted in public services
Citizens target of public actions
Citizens suffering from service systems’ errors or
incompetence
Dimensions of
agency
Activity and voluntariness Citizens as active actors
Citizens being empowered and engaged actors
Citizens as involuntary actors
Citizens as unconscious actors
Citizens as responsible actors
Level of value co-creation Citizens acting as individuals and creating individual
value
Citizens acting active in their community
Citizens contributing to wider issues and creating public
forms of value
Citizens creating simultaneously different kinds of value
Source(s): Authors’ own work
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between various partnering agencies, actors, organisations or levels of governance, and the
cases represent contexts of cross-sectoral employment services, health and social services,
social insurance and tax services and youth services (Best et al., 2019; Cluley and Radnor,
2021; Engen et al., 2021; Eriksson et al., 2020; Rossi and Tuurnas, 2021). Inter-organisational
collaboration also emerges in the empirical cases of outcome-based contracting (e.g. social
impact bond; Farr, 2016) or reform-based service development (Komulainen et al., 2023;
Strokosch and Osborne, 2020).
One of the reviewed articles focusesmore on enabling professionals’working conditions in
public legal services (Tuan, 2018). Some articles observe specific programs aiming to create
value, such as in Lindqvist and Westrup’s (2020) article, which focuses on the programme
concerning the education of refugee children. Some of the empirical articles take a more
micro-level perspective by focusing on encounters and interactions in services, such as care
services, cancer care or telehealth services or, more widely, in healthcare services (Hardyman
et al., 2015; Jefferies et al., 2021; Jenhaug, 2021; Leite andHodgkinson, 2021;Osei-Frimpong
and Owusu-Frimpong, 2017; Skarli, 2023).
Overall, while a consistent definition concerning the role of citizens in VCC processes is
lacking, the VCC discussion highlights the importance of creating value through meaningful
interactions in which experiences are co-created for themselves, but also individuals may
contribute to experiences of others by taking part in collective VCC (Osborne et al., 2016;
Trischler et al., 2023). In addition, citizens often need to utilise several services and interact
with various professionals simultaneously; accordingly, multiple actors influence citizens’
value perceptions (Gr€onroos, 2019; Hardyman et al., 2015).
Forms of agency
Citizens as resource integrators. Resource integration is the key element of VCC.
Accordingly, citizen agency is typically described as resource integration with other
stakeholders to co-create value (Farr, 2016; Jefferies et al., 2021; Lindqvist and Westrup,
2020; Trischler et al., 2023). Consequently, co-creation can also happen without direct
interaction with PSOs (Trischler et al., 2023), but resource integration typically requires some
sort of social exchange (e.g. Alford, 2016; Eriksson et al., 2023).
The resources that citizens bring to the VCC process are knowledge, cultural or social
resources and local competence that supplement the PSO’s financial and professional
knowledge resources (Eriksson et al., 2023; Jefferies et al., 2021). This realisation is
important, as Eriksson et al. (2020) note, because knowledge concerning citizens’ needs and
the locus of the value-in-use is necessary to make coordinated value propositions. The
knowledge that citizens bring to theVCCprocess is often described as experiential and reflects
their life experiences, but citizens also have unique information about using the public service
system (Jefferies et al., 2021), which is an important asset in VCC process development,
offering the possibility of gaining new perspectives and innovative suggestions (Lee, 2019).
Jaspers and Steen (2019) note that to co-create value, citizens might need to improve their
coping strategies related to value conflicts and possible tensions between different actors.
These strategies often require improvement because people tend to avoid conflicts.
Citizens can also have a significant cache of dormant resources that can be activated
through co-production (Palumbo, 2016), although citizens’ perceptions of their capacity to
engage in resource integration and their conceptions of the resources that they want to offer
vary (Hardyman et al., 2019). Hardyman et al. (2019) raise the importance of co-learning,
which is sometimes needed to benefit from the offered resources.
Citizens as experiencers. As mentioned in the previous section, citizens’ experiences,
based on their life situations, are focal components in VCC processes and are dependent on
service experiences (e.g. Osborne et al., 2016; Strokosch andOsborne, 2020). Hardyman et al.
(2015, p. 97) link resource integration and service experiences: “In viewing patients as
resource integrators, we suggest that the quality of interactions between health care
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professionals and patients with health care is key, given that these experiences potentially may
travel with the patient and be drawn upon in future service encounters.”
Also, it is the resource of experiential knowledge citizens contribute to VCC processes.
Experiences may concern a single set of service encounters or service systems and can be
subjective and heterogeneous (Best et al., 2019; Jefferies et al., 2021; Parkeret al., 2023). They
are not limited to direct service users but can also encompass their relatives and friends or other
emotionally connected third-party actors (Jenhaug, 2021; Skarli, 2023). For example, Jenhaug
(2021) observes the role of family carers in PSL and the VCC context, noticing
interdependence between the value-in-use experienced by the service user and that
experienced by the family carer.
Citizen experiences and needs are heterogeneous because citizens are “representatives of
society as a whole”, including people with different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds,
genders and impairments (Cluley and Radnor, 2021, p. 567; Parker et al., 2023). Experiences
are also connected to context and may be temporal; therefore, the value experienced may
change over time, as illustrated in research on VCC in cancer care (Hardyman et al., 2019).
Previous interactions also affectVCCpossibilities in future service encounters (Lee, 2019).As
a theme connected to experiences, Osei-Frimpong and Owusu-Frimpong (2017) emphasise
emotional, cognitive, social and behavioural responses as factors affecting value outcomes.
Citizens as beneficiaries. Citizens can also be seen as targets or beneficiaries of public
action. Behind this view are fundamental ideals of public services, such as equal access to
benefits, enhancement of citizens’ well-being and education (e.g. Williams et al., 2016),
securement of well-functioning service processes (e.g. Larsson and Skjølsvik, 2023) and
fulfilment of service user needs (Eriksson et al., 2023).
Regarding the basic relationship between PSOs and citizens, citizens are expected to derive
support and aid from the public service networks (Farr, 2016). From themore critical value co-
destruction perspective, citizensmay also suffer from errors associated with their own or other
operators’ actions. An example of this is a PSO that is unable to serve citizens because its
service is inaccessible or faulty or the inter-organisational collaboration is poor (Engen
et al., 2021).
Citizens as co-producers. Because citizens are expected to express their needs actively,
VCC highlights the collaborative side of citizen agency (Gr€onroos, 2019). This highlights
citizens’ activities in joint service processes as co-producers (Leite and Hodgkinson, 2021;
McMullin, 2023; Osborne et al., 2016; Palumbo and Manesh, 2023), which lead to VCC
(Palumbo, 2016; Trischler et al., 2023). Co-production is also showcased as a somewhat
unavoidable part of public service use, such as due to the requirement of producing personal
information before or during the service encounter (Alford, 2014, 2016; Osborne et al., 2016).
However, co-productionmay require different kinds of efforts from citizens, from engaging in
a routine task with no specific training to offering more manifold capabilities and knowledge
and creating more complex processes (Alford, 2016).
Citizens can also take part as co-designers in developing services or innovating solutions
(Farr, 2016; Leite and Hodgkinson, 2021; Osborne et al., 2016; Trischler et al., 2023) and in
community-developing activities (Dudau et al., 2023; Kitchener et al., 2023), acting as
volunteers or providing peer support or expertise from experience (Eriksson et al., 2023;
Loeffler and Bovaird, 2019; McMullin, 2023). The level of involvement varies because this
activity may fall under service interactions, improving existing services or impacting the
whole service system (Eriksson et al., 2023). Palumbo and Manesh (2023) emphasise the
active agency of citizens and the connection of their participation to public value: citizens’
views express both their own needs and those of their community, which may be evolving or
dormant. In addition, as Nasi and Choi (2023, p. 15) note, by “aligning service delivery with
user needs and aspirations”, service providers can co-create public value. Some articles
addressVCC from a citizen participation viewpoint. Dudau et al. (2023) contribute to theVCC
discussion by observing citizen participation in VCC from a service ecosystem perspective.
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Dimensions of agency
Activity and voluntariness.One question arising from theVCCdiscussion concerns the type of
citizen activity expected. Activity is connected to the ideals of value creation. For example,
Leite and Hodgkinson (2021) as well as Saha and Goyal (2021) argue that active and engaged
citizen involvement is needed to create value. Therefore, the activation and engagement of
service users is a goal of VCC (Komulainen et al., 2023). The importance of active citizen
engagement and understanding of experiences from a service user viewpoint can be argued
through their embeddedness in public services (e.g. Nasi and Choi, 2023).
The nature of public services is such that citizensmight be unwilling but are required to use
a service (Cluley and Radnor, 2021; Lindqvist andWestrup, 2020). Osborne et al. (2016) note
that VCC could also take place through co-production, in which citizens could be involved
unconsciously or involuntarily. Alford (2016, p. 687) notes that unwillingness is not a
significant problem for value creation. For example, citizens may also have legal obligations
and be “structurally locked” to co-production and societal-value creation, as in some cases of
child support (Alford, 2016, p. 686).Willingness is also connected to aspects ofmotivation and
facilitation (e.g. Alford, 2014). Alford and Yates (2016) also link the question of VCC ability
to the level of willingness. They state that “the greater the sense of self-efficacy, the greater it
resonates with citizens’ intrinsic motivations” and add, “at the same time, the more the
citizens’ capacity relative to the task is enhanced, the more their sense of self-efficacy is
boosted’ (Alford and Yates, 2016, p. 162).
Despite their manner of involvement, VCC places some responsibility on citizens. First,
they are responsible for defining the value of the service because PSOs can only make service
offerings (Gr€onroos, 2019; Osborne, 2018). Second, citizens may also be expected to act in a
certain way or alter their behaviour, such as in drug treatment (Alford, 2016). Third, citizens
may also have responsibility for service provision, such as with neighbourhood safety patrols
(Williams et al., 2016). Gr€onroos (2019, p. 778) describes responsibility from a service logic
perspective: “The service users create value out of the service they are provided with, and they
may, if they choose to do so, invite service providers to engage with them and their value
creation. In such cases, the service providers get opportunities to co-create value with the
users. The users, not the providers, are in charge of value creation.”
Level of value creation.The question regarding the level of appropriate citizen involvement
leads to a discussion of whether citizens contribute to a single service or to the entire service
system and whether citizens can create only individual value or can also contribute to public
value. As a concept, VCCoriginates from private sector research and thus strongly emphasises
private value (Engen et al., 2021).
Citizen-created value is logically addressed at the micro level of a service ecosystem
because VCC is understood as service users’ efforts to realise the value of a service in their life
worlds. Thus, the personal experiences of service users play a significant role inVCC.Overall,
the literature suggests that the micro-level value of co-creative endeavours also affects the
organisational level and the service system level (e.g. Jefferies et al., 2021). For example,
substance abusers who actively take part in rehabilitation create value in the private sphere but
also in the surrounding communities and even societally, creating public value (Alford, 2016).
Citizens may also help others navigate public services (Jenhaug, 2021; Skarli, 2023).
Public value is created through active citizen involvement in co-productive processes
(Williams et al., 2016). While citizens are often described as contributing to individual value
creation, some articles discuss their ability to enhance more public forms of value. Citizens
also acknowledge the societal side of value creation, which goes beyond individual
preferences and interests (Alford and Yates, 2016). For example, McMullin (2023) observes
group value connected to collective co-production. Group value can include political value
aiming at democratic outcomes or societal value aiming at social cohesion, which McMullin
(2023) observes in relation to a project fighting the social isolation of older people.
Furthermore, Palumbo and Manesh (2023) describe citizens’ roles as public value
co-generators, taking part in the configuration of public service delivery and co-arranging
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solutions on both the individual and collective levels. Dudau et al. (2023), on the other hand,
argue that value could be represented on a spectrum in which different forms of public value
(value-in-society) and private value (value-in-use and value-in-context) coexist and may even
develop from one to another. However, they note that public value creation is dominant in
community engagement and public empowerment practices, whereas in service provision,
private value is highlighted (see Hardyman et al., 2019). In fact, in the reviewed articles, in the
service provision context, navigation in services and service encounters are often highlighted
as empirical cases that describe collaboration processes between different organisations often
leave citizens with a small role as service system developers. On the other hand, in the context
of communities and living environments, the aspect of citizens as active and empowered
participants is emphasised. Also, what is worth noticing is that citizens may also be in the
middle of conflicting values and coping skills for such situations are needed (Jaspers, 2021).
Discussion and conclusion
This literature review scrutinised citizen agency in the VCC discussion. We argue that
questions regarding citizen agency are linked to questions regarding the democratic potential
of VCC. As a research question, we asked how citizen agency is presented in the VCC
discussion. The main argument is that citizen roles in VCC beyond the service user role must
be scrutinised. The results offer several perspectives that contribute to the theoretical and
practical advancement of the VCC discussion. First, citizens’ roles, personal choices,
experiences and personal activities as service users are highlighted. These have common
features with the role of a citizen as seen in the paradigmatic discussion of new public
management (NPM). This notion is inconsistent with the VCCprinciples because VCC acts as
a response to the deficiencies in the NPM paradigm (e.g. Osborne, 2018). However, although
citizens often act in their personal service processes, and despite the focus on individual
perspectives (micro-level), VCC suggests that citizens can have a broader impact,
encompassing processes at the organisational meso- and even macro-level service systems.
This means that citizens can also create forms of public value, such as group or even political
value (McMullin, 2023). This is also essential for policy and practical implications.
Second, we argue that there is a gap concerning the collective side of the citizenry aspect in
the VCC discussion. According to the VCC logic, citizens are undoubtedly at the centre of
services or even part of the success of service processes, while being able to create public
forms of value, such as by producing knowledge or acting as partners. However, although
some studies connect value creation to participatory and more collective questions (Alford,
2016; Dudau et al., 2023; McMullin, 2023; Palumbo andManesh, 2023), this stream seems to
remain quite weak. According to Trischler and Charles (2019), the collective citizenry is
important in public policy analysis and design. In addressing public problems, it would
supplement the resource integration necessary for VCC by acknowledging citizens’ views and
supporting citizen empowerment.
Third, based on previous notions, we argue that the VCC discussion does not recognise
citizens’ opportunities to raise neglected issues, address biases or challenge existing structures
or processes (Dahl and Soss, 2014; Thomas, 2013). In addition, while citizens do participate,
the power relations remain unchanged, and citizens do not have control over VCC processes
(e.g. Arnstein, 1969; Osborne et al., 2021). The viewpoint of citizens’ roles as voters or
activists aiming to influence wider systemic questions is also almost non-existent in the VCC
discussion. Concerning the analytical interest in service processes, this may make sense, but
we believe that it is essential to recognise this gap.
Fourth, in everyday interactions, citizens have multiple simultaneous roles and can
simultaneously be portrayed as collective and individual actors (vanEijk and Steen, 2022). For
example, a patient availing of healthcare services and creating value for it in their own life
could also voice their opinion on the healthcare system by voting or through activism. We
suggest that not only the viewpoints of service professionals and citizens are at odds (Rossi and
IJPSM
Tuurnas, 2021) but also the different sides of activities in private or public value creation.
Restricting citizen agency to either individual or collective rolesmasks essential aspects of it in
the context of public services.
Finally, VCC can also be linked with core questions related to different politico-
administrative contexts and welfare state traditions. From a Nordic perspective, the emphasis
on efficiency as an ideal outcome of VCC may be at odds with the ideals of universalism as a
principle of the welfare state (Tuurnas, 2016). VCC is not just a service management issue but
also an essential public service policy issue. As Trischler and Charles (2019) note, recognising
users’ value creation processes is crucial in public policy analysis and design because it
enables the identification of the optimal resource allocation for both individuals and the
collective citizenry to integrate and function effectively.
As we note the foregoing essential for practice, we identify two main implications of the
present study’s findings for practice and policy. First, analysing citizens’ roles, forms of
engagement and levels of agency provides a foundation for developing value propositions –
configurations of resources designed to promise future value to users (e.g. Sk�al�en et al., 2015).
Second, we propose that a nuanced understanding of the diverse forms of citizen engagement
can significantly enhance experience design (e.g. Trischler and Westman Trischler, 2022).
Recognising and addressing the varied ways in which citizens interact and participate enable
more responsive, inclusive and user-centred service solutions and possibly more
democratically developed ones.
Further empirical research on citizen agency in VCC is needed because citizen-centricity
merits deeper scrutiny from the viewpoint of democracy, which is an inseparable part of public
administration and public service systems. This could be done, for example, by exploring
citizens’ roles in different kinds of concrete VCC processes and by observing citizens’ views
concerning their agency by comparing these views in different policy fields or in different
politic-administrative contexts. The relationship between citizens’ value perceptions and
public value and democracy must be elaborated upon because VCC on an individual level
could conceivably be at odds with democracy on the service system level (Steen et al., 2018).
This could be done in empirical studies by comparing the value perceptions of service users
within certain services to the value perceptions of service professionals. Another potential
avenue for future research is the analysis of the coexistence of diverse citizen positions inVCC
processes. As a key discovery of this study, and in line with the former studies by Saha and
Goyal (2021) and Best et al. (2019), citizens may possess various, evolving roles in VCCwith
PSOs simultaneously, thus changing the nature of citizen agency. An ethnographic approach,
such as the shadowing technique (e.g. Ferguson, 2016) in VCC processes, could help to
understand the spectrum of citizen roles and agency in VCC.
Notes
1. We know that defining a journal as a predatory one is not simple. However, we decided to leave out the
journals of publisher, whose practices have raised discussions and measures in academia because of
their possible predatory practices, such as “prioritizing self-interest, forsaking the best editorial and
publication practices” (Oviedo-Garc�ıa, 2021, p. 417).
2. All of the articles are included in the reference list.
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Corresponding author
Kaisa Kurkela can be contacted at: kaisa.kurkela@uwasa.fi
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