Background
Complex policy problems do not follow the definitions of sectoral or organizational mandates in which individual concerns are linked to specific policy problems and where the respective accountabilities are easily demonstrated through the performance of individual policies (Mazzucato, 2021). Addressing the grand challenges of our time represents a highly collaborative exercise between public policies and agencies, private businesses, economic institutions, and civic activities. In this project, the interplay between the institutional domains of public, private, and civic actors and activities is called hybridity (Johanson and Vakkuri, 2017). More specifically, hybridity refers to the consequences of goal-oriented action among public, private, and civil society actors and organizations characterized by mixed ownership, goal incongruence, diverse funding arrangements, and varied forms of control (Johanson and Vakkuri, 2017).
Currently, there is a limited understanding of hybridity and the complex interdependencies between different societal sectors. This gap extends to policymaking, where the co-creation of value by public, private, and civil society actors remains underexplored (Ananny and Crawford, 2018). The relationship between hybrid governance and policymaking , understanding the multiplicity of policy value beyond public-sector outcomes, and linking value co-creation mechanisms to societal policies all warrant further investigation (Capano et al., 2019; Vakkuri and Johanson, 2020).
Goal
The purpose of this research project (BRIDPOL) is to contribute to a novel theoretical-conceptual understanding of the links between policy-making, value creation, and hybridity, as well as to more systematically scrutinize the impacts of hybridity on the governance of algorithms, digital
business platforms, and urban sustainability. We set the following research questions (RQs):
RQ1. How can we conceptualize and theorize society-level policies that are influenced by hybridity and thus aim at mixing, compromising, and legitimizing among distinct forms of public, market, and social value?
RQ2. What are the policy mechanisms of value creation and their interactions in the governance of algorithms, digital business platforms, and urban sustainability? How does institutional hybridity condition the policy formation of these contexts?
RQ3. What are the most important synergies, problems, and complications of value constellations in policy settings under hybridity?
Work Packages
WP1:Policy value amidst hybridity – Framework and synthesis
WP1 contributes to achieving the RQs of the project first by creating an overall theoretical-conceptual scheme for the project and second, by managing and coordinating the project conclusions and synthesis work based on the analysis of WP2–WP4. WP1 builds on and extends the work of Vakkuri and Johanson (2020) in reconceptualizing policy value through the schemes of mixing, compromising, and legitimizing.
WP2: Public value as point of origin: Algorithmic Governance and Accountability
Our research explores public value in digitization and algorithmic governance facilitated by hybridization. We analyze the policies on algorithmic governance by focusing on the transnational co-creation of ethical codes and external assessments of AI. We also study algorithmic transparency and accountability in automated governance through the analytical lens of hybridity.
WP3: Market value as point of origin – Business platforms for government digitalization
Business platforms have become an important policy instrument for digitalizing government services in contemporary society. They renew the traditional ways in which individuals and organizations interact. Digital business platforms have many potential benefits, such as reduced costs, sustained competitive advantage, or streams of innovation, but they can also be associated with potential risks, such as inequality across the digital divide, monopolistic tendencies and data privacy and security issues. As it is not possible to enhance government digitalization without the crucial role of private companies, a multi-faceted setting of value co-creation is created between the business sector and the government, where business firms are primarily incentivized by market value, and public agencies by public value. Accordingly, a potential tension is apparent not only between market and public value but also for social value. This WP aims to understand the mechanisms and problems of policy value generation in governing digitally driven business platforms by analyzing two cases: 1) digital business platforms for healthcare and 2) digital business platforms for sustainable construction. The potential tensions, conflicts, and even paradoxes arising from the distinct constellations of market, public, and social value, the difference between infrastructure development and service production, and the involvement of stakeholders between the cases are analyzed. The aim of the WP1 is to critically revise the current theoretical understanding of value creation in the hybrid settings of policy-making by establishing novel connections between the research discussions of hybridity, public policy, and value (co-)creation.
WP4: Social value as a point of origin – Governing urban sustainability under hybridity
Social value is one phenotype of value created in and through policy processes. While market and public value is created to (or extracted from) individuals understood as entrepreneurs, customers, employees, taxpayers, congressmen, applicants, convicts, patients, or subjects, social value focuses on the relationship between individuals and their communities as well as social capital created through civic action and local community networks.
What are the more practical circumstances to make communities instrumental for initiatives comparable yet distinct from the spheres of government or business? This WP focuses on two arenas where social value becomes entangled with other outlets of policy value. It studies social value creation as an enabler for more sustainable governance of complex urban issues.
The first study originates from prior empirical work on smart urban security in Tampere, with rich data from workshops and panel sessions with urban security actors, urban event organizers and community groups, and two emergency management simulations. The second study is carried out in cooperation with Rebuild by Design initiative, New York City. Its qualitative fieldwork data will be accompanied with content analysis of NYC City Planning Commission meetings to reveal the role given to community groups while constructing a more climate resilient city.
Funding and partners
BRIDPOL Research Project is funded by Academy of Finland and coordinated by Tampere Univerisity and University of Helsinki. The project is connected to IBID International Research Network on Institutional Hybridity, and the IRSPM Special Interest Group (SIG) on Governing and managing hybridity.
References:
Capano, G., Howlett, M.R. and Virani, A. (Eds.) (2019). Making policies work. First- and secondorder mechanisms in po
Mazzucato, Mariana (2021). Mission economy. A moonshot guide to changing capitalism. New
York, Harper Business Publishing.
Johanson, J.-E. and Vakkuri, J. (2017). Governing hybrid organisations. Exploring diversity of
institutional life. New York; Abingdon: Routledge.
Vakkuri, J. and Johanson, J-E. (Eds.) (2020). Hybrid governance, organisations and society. Value creation perspectives. New York & Abingdon: Routledge.