Mainstreaming co-production initiatives: How to enable long-term creation of public value

Many co-production projects take place as short-term initiatives and there seems to be an empirical problem with mainstreaming the learning associated with such initiatives across units or departments. In this paper, we develop a ‘co-production maturity model’, which considers the range of short-term co-production activities and the organizational processes and procedures which are important when mainstreaming co-production. Mainstreaming co-production goes beyond simply ensuring that co-production is sustainable for an individual project. Instead, it is about applying the logic of learning throughout organizational structures, cultures, and processes and thus spreading learning beyond individual services. We argue that managers need to filter relevant information, create knowledge-sharing routines, and cope with conflicting pressures when mainstreaming co-production. This paper contributes to theories about the sustainability of co-production, bringing in organization and management theory to elaborate and discuss how mainstreaming of different types of co-production initiatives can be supported. We also raise questions for further empirical research and develop a research agenda for mainstreaming successful co-production initiatives, considering questions of sustainability, and organizational learning and development.