Public management research has in recent years paid increasing attention to the third sector, especially to its role in the provision of public services. Evidence of this is the rising number of publications on the topic, as well as a growing number of sessions and papers on the topic in academic conferences of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) and the International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM). However, much of the discussion on its role is motivated at least as much by ideology as by fact. We still lack a proper empirical understanding of what happens when the third sector is drawn into public service provision.
The book “Co-production: The Third Sector and the Delivery of Public Services”, aims to enhance this understanding by presenting several new studies on the subject. The authors also introduce the concepts of co-production, co-management and co-governance as a conceptual framework that enables us to better understand such developments.
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