Sustainability and Resilience of Collaborative Public Service Delivery

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to invite you to share your research and submit articles in the field of sustainability and resilience of collaborative public service delivery for an upcoming Special Issue of Sustainability.

Public service delivery constitutes a process that ranges from detecting a need for a given service, through creating it, to delivering in the final form to the society. It includes administrative services (e.g., permits, concessions, e-services), social services (e.g., healthcare, public safety, education, culture), and technical services (e.g., public transport, water supply, waste management, energy supply). Delivery of such services is a complex process that faces many challenges (e.g., the diffusion of social problems, emergencies, joint decision-making, and service integration) and constraints (e.g., resource, organizational, financial). Local governments are crucial in dealing with these problems and delivering high-quality public services. They operate at the level of the community and are able to quickly identify and respond to their needs. Nevertheless, they do not have the ability to create, deliver, and improve public services without inter-organizational and inter-sectoral collaboration (Osborne et al. 2013; Bryson et al. 2006). This collaboration is essential because it increases the ability to meet social needs more easily, quickly, and efficiently than individual action (Keast et al. 2014, Sienkiewicz-Małyjurek 2017).

However, collaboration is a very complex process and is of a paradoxical nature (Ospina and Saz-Carranza 2010; Noble et al. 2018, Sienkiewicz-Małyjurek 2019). This is due to the fact that, on the one hand, its task is to increase the possibility of achieving common objectives but, on the other hand, it involves a high risk of failure. The dynamics and complexity of public service delivery make collaboration indispensable and it is necessary to look for solutions that will ensure the effectiveness of it. The concepts of sustainability and resilience contribute to this (Kożuch and Sienkiewicz-Małyjurek 2013; Duit 2016; Linkov and Trump 2019). Sustainability, with regard to public service delivery, is the organizational ability to continuously learn, develop, and reconstruct in order to the joint performance of high public value in accordance with environmental, economic, and social order. In turn, resilience is the ability to cope with emerging challenges, threats, and problems, to learn from them, and to develop from the knowledge generated. Both of these concepts are interesting prospective research areas that could deal with the challenges and complexity of processes of collaborative public service delivery. Although the issues of sustainability and resilience are gaining more and more interest, they are still in the infancy stage (Linkov and Trump 2019, Duit 2016; Kożuch and Sienkiewicz-Małyjurek 2013, Mah et al. 2012), and empirical research in this area is uncommon. In this regard, the purpose of this Special Issue is to understand the concepts of sustainability and resilience in processes of collaborative public service delivery and to comprehensive overview methods, approaches, and experiences in this field. On the base of collaboration, sustainability, and resilience lens, this Special Issue aims to shed light on public service delivery processes, including but not limited to:

• complexity, challenges, and risks in public services delivery processes
• variety of collaborative processes in the public service delivery, e.g., co-management, co-production, co-creation, partnership, commissioning
• environmental, economic, and social order in creating public value
• resilience approach and resilience thinking in public services delivery
• interactions among sustainability and resilience in public services delivery
• impact of sustainability and resilience on the development, effectiveness, and performance of public services delivery processes

Empirical research, case studies, and comparative studies are especially welcome, but also theoretical and cross-sectional studies are needed and acceptable.

References:

1. Bryson, J.M., Crosby, B.C., Stone, M.M. (2006). The Design and Implementation of Cross-Sector Collaborations: Propositions from the Literature. Public Administration Review 66(s1), 44-55.
2. Duit, A. (2016). Resilience thinking: lessons for public administration. Public Administration 94(2), pp. 364-380.
3. Keast, R., Mandell, M.P., Agranoff, R. (Eds.). (2014). Network theory in the public sector: Building new theoretical frameworks. London: Routledge.
4. Kożuch, B., Sienkiewicz-Małyjurek, K. (2013) Collaborative networks as a basis for internal economic security in sustainable local governance. The case of Poland. In: Raczkowski K., Schneider F. (eds.), The economic security of business transactions. Management in business. Chartridge Books Oxford, Oxford, p. 313-328.
5. Linkov I., Trump B.D. (2019). Resilience and Governance. In: The Science and Practice of Resilience. Risk, Systems and Decisions. Cham: Springer.
6. Mah D.N., Hills P. (2012). Collaborative governance for sustainable development: wind resource assessment in Xinjiang and Guangdong Provinces, China. Sustainable Development 20, 85-97.
7. Noble, D., Charles, M.B., Keast, R. (2018). The Research Collaboration Paradox: A Tale of Two Governance Narratives in an Australian Innovation Setting. Australian Journal of Public Administration 77(4), 597-603.
8. Osborne, S.P., Radnor, Z., Nasi, G. (2013). A New Theory for Public Service Management? Toward a (Public) Service-Dominant Approach. American Review of Public Administration 43(2), 135-158.
9. Ospina, S.M., Saz-Carranza, A. (2010). Paradox and collaboration in network management. Administration and Society 42(4), 404-440.
10. Sienkiewicz-Małyjurek (2019). Relational behaviours and organisational capabilities in public safety networks. Management Decision 58(6), 1067-1083
11. Sienkiewicz-Małyjurek, K. (2017). Inter-organisational Collaboration in the Public Safety Management System. Warsaw: Scholar Publishing House.

Dr. Katarzyna Sienkiewicz-Małyjurek
Guest Editor

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• public service delivery
• sustainability
• resilience
• collaboration
• public governance