Employees’ resistance to users’ ideas in public service innovation

Abstract

This article contributes to the existing criticism of the positive emphasis on user participation in service innovation as co-creation by examining employee resistance to user-driven innovation. The empirical base comprises interviews, document studies, and observations from a project that focused on implementing a user-initiated idea in public care services in Norway. To discuss employee resistance to innovative user ideas, a power perspective is included by drawing on the Foucault-based theory of identity regulation and discourse. Employees resist the required identity regulation by distorting the initial innovative idea to align with their problem representations, which is facilitated by entangled discourses. The power relations embedded in the different parties’ subject positions emphasize how governing the user side is incompatible with being governed by the users. The article contributes to our knowledge of service innovation and the co-creation of value by demonstrating discursive mechanisms for twisting value propositions.