Capturing the nature of public value creation

Dr. Eva Knies (Utrecht School of Governance) received for her research proposal 'Capturing the nature of public value creation' a prestigious VENI grant from NWO. The combination of public service performance and professional performance supported by good HR-policy and leadership makes this research interesting for the focus area Professional Performance. Below you will find a short introduction to the research. 

Expectations of what the public value is that welfare states should deliver are changing and rising. This is a fundamental issue in an era where citizens are no longer recipients, but co-producers, of public services, in which tailor-made services are valued over standardized ones and in which ICT changes the nature of public service provision.
This project’s aim is to capture the public value that, according to various stakeholders, elderly care and secondary education organisations should create and to explain which factors and mechanisms contribute to high-quality public service provision. The question this project will answer is: what constitutes public service performance and what are determining factors and mechanisms?
The rationale of the conceptual model underlying this project, which builds on insights from the public management and Human Resource Management bodies of literature, is that the provision of public services is largely dependent on frontline workers’ competencies, attitudes and behaviours and that their supervisors’ people management activities can facilitate high-quality service delivery.
The model will be tested in three countries (Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK) that represent different welfare-state systems since institutional characteristics affect public value creation. Data will be collected from different stakeholders (employees, managers, public-service users) as these all play significant roles in the process of service provision. The research will use a multi-method design combining interviews and focus groups, to capture the nature of public-value creation according to different stakeholders and to raise practitioners’ awareness, with a longitudinal survey to test the proposed causal model.
This study will provide organisations in the fields of elderly care and secondary education with valuable insights into the essence of public value creation and a valid and reliable diagnostic tool to rate their performance and to identify areas where improvements are possible.