PS9600 Trust-based governance and the co-creation of public value outcomes Emneplan

Learning outcomes

Upon completing the course, the candidates are expected to have gained the following learning outcomes (knowledge, skills and general competence).

Knowledge

The candidate

• has in-depth knowledge of and insight into the concepts of trust and governance, and the study of trust-based governance.
• has in-depth knowledge and understanding of key theoretical approaches and is familiar with cutting edge knowledge, including co-creation of public value outcomes.
• has knowledge about trust-based governance in different national contexts, and belonging research literature.

Skills

The candidate

• can compare, analyse and contribute to developing concepts and ideas in the field of trust-based governance.
• can reflect on and communicate the research in the field and its development in a broader conceptual context

General competence

The candidate

• can assess and identify new research questions in the research field
• know about and can utilize data from relevant international databases (e.g. the “Collaborative Governance Case Database” presented in the course)
• can take part in debates in relevant national and international fora.

The course is an optional course in the PhD Programme in Social Sciences.

Public governance involves the formulation and achievement of common goals and is inextricably linked with control since someone must have the power to make and enforce authoritative decisions in order to ensure goal attainment. Liberal democratic societies aim to control the formulation, implementation and impact of public decisions with the least possible amount of force, for example, by facilitating dialogue about means and ends in the hope that downstream actors will internalize the goals and voluntarily commit to using the most effective tools to achieve them.

However, the attempt to minimize the use of force in public control systems cannot hide the fact that control is exercised top-down and tends to constrain behavior of frontline staff and, therefore, tends to come into conflict with human demands for autonomy, self-realization and justice. While some people argue that sub-ordinate public employees must accept constraining control mechanisms such as the obligation to follow rules and having their work closely monitored, these forms of control may undermine the motivation of public employees to use their professional norms and competences to do a good job and may limit the scope for collaboration and innovation at the frontline. Control is a real buzz-killer and too much of it may create an atmosphere of mistrust that hampers communication and lead to low work-life satisfaction and correspondingly to a high turnover rate. Finally, control is not only intrusive, but also expensive. The costs of controlling thousands of staff members is high and may lead to organizational inflexibility and ossification.

Trust—defined as the acceptance of the risk of vulnerability to actions of others—is often praised as the antidote of control. If we trust other people’s competences and intentions, we do not have to control them so much. Trust not only allows us to scale down our efforts to control behaviors and results, but also has a value in itself. Trust motivates people to improve their performance, speeds up communication, and creates an autonomous space for collaborative exploration and exploitation of new ideas.

Assuming that frontline personnel share the overall policy and service goals with the political and administrative leaders at the apex of their organization may help to enhance trust-based-governance in the public sector. Trusting public employees to use their skills and competences to realize important goals and producing public value prompts dialogue up and down the chain of government about how to coordination the joint efforts to realize the overall goals. It will also create a need for interorganizational collaboration and perhaps even involvement of relevant and affected actors from the economy and civil society. Hence, as trust begets trust, we may want to involve all those actors who can help us to produce better and perhaps even innovative public solutions.

Collaborative governance and co-creation of public value thrives on the expansion of trust-based governance and a gravitational shift from control to trust may spark the transformation of the public sector into a platform for co-creation of new and better solutions. This process is already under way and its potential impact is significant. Hence, a future turn to co-creation may help the public sector to produce more needs-based services, deal effectively with wicked problems and escape the cross pressure between growing citizen expectations and scarcity of public resources.

This PhD-course aims to explore the connection between trust-based governance and the co-creation of public value outcomes. It will present and critically discuss cutting-edge research literature to provide a deeper understanding of what trust-based governance and how and why public value can be co-created by a plethora of public and private actors. Finally, it will look at how trust can enhance collaborative innovation and how collaborative governance can build trust. Theoretical discussion will walk hand in hand with empirical examples and results and the overall goal will be to build research competence in the field of public governance reform with a special emphasis on trust, collaboration and public value management.

The course is organized as a combination of lectures, discussions, presentation of candidates’ own research,and commenting on others' work. Active participation is necessary to adequately understand the course material and themes.

Participation is mandatory, and candidates are expected to attend all days of teaching and required to attend at least 80 percent of teaching activities. Course requirements are assessed as confirmed or not confirmed. The course requirement must be completed and confirmed within the given deadline in order to have the right to submit a final essay.

Assessment is pass/ fail. If an essay is considered not passed, the candidate may submit a revised essay once within a specified time.

All examination support material is allowed as long as source reference and quotation technique requirements are applied.

Assessment is pass/ fail.

The essay will be graded by the course lectures.

Professor Asbørn Røiseland