academicservices forpublicmanagement
Wolfson Research Institute, 23rd November 2012
Relationships of Consumption: interdependency between
users and providers of public services
Professor Andrew Gray
A bi-angular analysis
Consumption as role
Consumption as interaction
Consumer: member of a state with rights and obligations relating to
access, standards
and participatio
nRole Relationship: Citizen
Defining property: Constitutionality
Provider:state agent using
rules of access
and content
determined through
due process
Consumer: beneficiary differentiat
ed by profession
ally adjudicate
d need
Provider:expert who
controls access to
and provision
of the service
role relationship: client defining property: professionally adjudicated and
individualised
Consumer: ability to pay with right to
choose provider and
content
Provider: ability to provide
with right todiscriminate
between consumers
role relationship: customerdefining property: reciprocal choice
interaction: co-production
‘the critical mix of activities that service agents and citizens contribute to the provision of public services.’
Brudney & England 1983: 59
Co-production means delivering public services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and their neighbours.
The Challenge of Co-production, NESTA, 2009
interaction: inseparability
Inseparability of provider and consumer as a feature peculiar to service relationships
(Groonroos 2007)
interdependence:the distinguishing property of co-production and inseparabilitySequential
Production is determined by progress of others up and down the process. External planning and scheduling is required to optimise
capacity use.
Pooled Production is largely independent of others but determined by
use of shared rules and standard procedures to provide information to align activities
Reciprocal Production is determined by reciprocal and simultaneous working together in which information flows are critical to
coordination of effort(Thomson 1967)
Summary
public service consumption as interaction:
public service consumption as role
Conclusions?Conceptual
Nature of interdependency is the differentiating feature of consumption;
Confusion of all types of consumption as customers overlooks this
relationship and its variability
policy risk: choice aggravates inequalities
conclusions - practical
provision risk:service providers relate to users inappropriately
consumption risk:users’ unrealistic and improper demands of provision
