The purpose of this section is to summarize and synthesize the theoretical perspectives presented above into a theoretical framework that can be used to analyse the examined case.
The first perspective relates to service-dominant logic and the notion of value co-creation (Lusch and Nambisan 2015). Service-dominant logic is used to theorize agile development as the activities and processes that underlie resource integration. Through iterative and collaborative practices, agile development ensures user involvement and value co-creation throughout a service delivery cycle. Although other works have explored value creation in software development settings, these studies have several limitations. First, the extant literature explores value creation from a business perspective (Boehm 2003; Ramesh et al. 2010), largely ignoring the role of users in the context of defining and creating value. Second, the extant literature on agile development focuses on value creation at the team level (Dingsøyr et al. 2018; Sharp and Robinson 2010;
Stray et al. 2016), providing limited insight into the interaction between organizational structure, strategic decisions, and software development practices. Third, the agile literature does not consider the role of technology in enabling or inhibiting value creation. Fourth, in the extant studies on co-creation in public sector organizations, the examination of value co-creation is mostly limited to the early stages of specification and design (Voorberg et al. 2015), and these studies fail to view value co-creation as a continuous and ongoing process.
The second perspective presented in this thesis relates to the inertia of existing systems and practices. To draw on the benefits of value co-creation, large organizations must find strategies for overcoming rigidity and establish efficient feedback loops. By drawing on the concept of path dependence (Mahoney 2000; Sydow et al. 2009), this thesis explores the way in which legacy systems and established work practices reduce an organization’s
flexibility and value co-creation. In so doing, this thesis explores an empirical blind spot in the information systems literature by addressing the role of inertia in the co-creation process.
The third theoretical perspective concerns digital platforms and platformization as a strategy for overcoming technical and organizational inertia that can enable value co-creation across time and space. The extant literature discusses the role of digital platforms in facilitating communication and collaboration between governments and citizens (Hand and Ching 2020; Nam 2012) but provides limited insight into the transformative potential of digital platforms and the way in which platforms enable value co-creation at scale. The existing studies in this field also provide limited insight into the interplay between platforms and organizations and the way in which digital platforms and processes of platformization might enhance the flexibility and innovation of public sector organizations.
To explore these gaps in the extant literature and provide improved insight into the role of digital platforms in value co-creation, I performed a longitudinal case study within the IT department of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare administration. This case is described in detail in the following chapter.
3 Case
The Norwegian Labour and Welfare administration (NAV) was established in 2006 following the reform of the Norwegian welfare system. The reform was a response to long-held concerns regarding the disintegration of public welfare services and involved a merger of the formerly separate Employment Services and National Insurance Services. In addition, the reform involved a formal collaboration between NAV and municipal social services. In total, the organization employs approximately 19,000 people, of whom 14,000 are central government employees and 5,000 are municipality employees.
NAV forms the backbone of the Norwegian welfare state and is responsible for both increasing the work ability of the population and supporting citizens economically when they are unable to support themselves. To this end, NAV redistributes one-third of the national budget through schemes that include sick benefits, unemployment benefits, and old-age pensions. Providing reliable and efficient services is thus imperative to ensure both the individual wellbeing of citizens and collective trust in the welfare state.
The NAV IT department develops, maintains, and operates the information systems that support the organization. The IT department has approximately 700 employees and 400 consultants and maintains and operates close to 300 applications. The department’s application portfolio is made up of several generations of solutions, from mainframe systems to relatively modern web-oriented applications, as well as standard systems that support operations such as accounting, payroll, and document production.
The service delivery strategy of the organization has evolved over the years. This evolution can be described in terms of two different value logics. Between 2006 and 2016, NAV was characterized by a goods-dominant logic. Between 2017 and 2019, NAV transitioned to a service-dominant logic. Table 2 summarizes how these periods differed in terms of sourcing strategy, governance strategy, and technical infrastructure, and each of these elements are described in more detail in the following sections.
Table 2. A comparison of the two different value logics of NAV
Goods-dominant logic
application layer are tightly coupled.
defined interfaces between applications and between
applications and the platform core.
Governance strategy
Staged software development methods with centralized decision models. Value is created in a
“step-by-step” process where developers remain oblivious of user’s actual needs.
Iterative software development where software is developed by multidisciplinary teams. User feedback is collected and reintegrated throughout the service delivery cycle.