P26 Research ON collaboration between multiple actors in a public value creation context
Corresponding chair
Associate professor Linda Höglund, Accounting and Control, School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University. linda.hoglund@mdu.se
Review group chair
Assistent professor Karin Axelsson, The School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Mälardalen University
Assistent professor Kim Eriksson, School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University
Professor Maria Mårtensson, School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University
Description
This panel takes a special interest in research ON collaboration between multiple actors in a context of public value creation. The realisation of public value take place in an abstract arena, rather than in the specific domain of public sector organizations (PSO), with the necessity to consider global and emerging issues such as climate change, sustainable, social and economic development, biodiversity and ecological account. These grand challenges can’t be solved by a PSO on its own as it requires multiple of collaborative actors from governments and business as well as public–private–civil society cooperation. As such it becomes important to recognise public management, not as detached from politics, private efforts and civic activities, but as a result of complex interactions between them. The judgement of what is public value is thus collectively negotiated in collaborative processes.
The collaboration includes both the individual level, organisational level and the more general public level, as consideration must be paid not only to individuals but also to the value produced for the wider community. However, so far most research addressing collaboration between multiple actors has focused on research IN collaboration per se, neglecting research ON collaboration. This means that we know little about how to account for, monitor, organize and manage research collaborations in a way that generate value for all the actors involved as well as society at large. In addition, more specifically, we have a limited knowledge about (un)intended consequences of research collaborations, the effects of its methods on research quality and its potential impact or grimpact (negative impact) and possible lock-in effects of research collaboration, as not all collaborations contribute to value creation. Thus, we have a limited knowledge also about processes of value (co-)destruction in relation to research collaborations.
Call for papers
Within public management in general, but especially when addressing public value, we need to better reflect on value(s), the forms taken by publicness, and the implications for public management and its possibility to contribute to public value creation in a context of multiple actors. This involves taking advantage of the stock of knowledge in other fields and re-defining the boundaries between accounting, strategy, management and other disciplines. Thus, responding to previous calls for more engagement with policy and public administration literature (cf. Bracci et al. 2021) as well as the marketing and service literature (Osborne, 2021). In short, we need to know more about the results and its effects (positive or negative) in relation to value creation when a PSOs engaging in collaboration, and it needs to be developed from different theoretical perspectives.