The diffusion of digital technologies redefines the structure and processes of public organizations, continuously enhancing the ways and opportunities of communication with the citizens. Accordingly, co-creation, fuelled by digitally enhanced communication, can facilitate the exchange and integration of resources, steering the digital transformation process to increased public value outcomes. This increased relevance of co-creation in digital transformation prompts for a comprehensive, contextually rich framework of practical and theoretical significance. To address this gap, we select two frameworks from the digital transformation and the co-creation domains based on their common reference in communication. By aligning the communication concepts of the two selected frameworks we link the co-creation into the digital transformation context, thus making the digital transformation framework more complete. This research contributes to the digital transformation field by providing a roadmap which shows how the transformation framework can be enriched with co-creation via communication. We highlight the implications of this research and suggest empirical testing of the aligned framework to assert its applicability in different public organizational contexts.
1 Introduction
The public sector is increasingly adopting digital technologies, ultimately aiming to digitally transform its operations in its quest to improve citizen services and outcome public values. By reference to the relevant academic literature, this envisioned digital transformation is preceded by digitization and digitalization as they engender the transition from analogue to digital service delivery and the consequent changes in the organizational processes and technology, respectively [12, 18, 27].
Digital transformation affects the ways and opportunities of citizens’ interactions empowering them to actively engage in co-creation initiatives [23]. In this vein, communication by means of digital technologies has been addressed as the common reference between co-creation and digital transformation [13]. Extending this standpoint, as value is redefined in terms of citizens’ expectations, digital technologies can provide the context to enable and incorporate the exchange of citizens’ experiences and needs into the design and delivery of their public services. Therefore, within the S-D logic paradigm [35], digital transformation is integral to communication as it constitutes its global contextual environment, whereas the co-creation process is subsumed as being an interactional process. Despite this conceptual connection and interinfluence of the co-creation and digital transformation processes, there seems to be a lack of a common framework which could compare and align relevant knowledge to offer a comprehensive practical and theoretical understanding of their shared communication element. In this vein, Mergel et al. [18] have acknowledged the importance of co-creation in digital transformation. However, they do not consider co-creation in their digital transformation framework. This study addresses this gap by fitting a comprehensive co-creation framework developed in our previous research, to the existing digital transformation framework of [18]. The study's scientific contribution lies in demonstrating how co-creation can be included in digital transformation by aligning the communication element in both frameworks. It employs a novel heuristic ontological matching approach of examining semantic similarities to establish tangible relationships between the elements of two selected frameworks. In doing so, the study opens up for discussion about potential improvements in semantic correspondences. Henceforth, it paves the way towards the development of a meaningful merged framework of digital transformation with co-creation.
2 Theoretical background and scope of co-creation within the transformational government
2.1 Definition of Transformational Government
Governments around the world are increasingly embracing the transformational government paradigm to become more competitive, nodal and ultimately optimize their outcome public values. T- government is described as the employment of ICT-Led services to digitally transform public organizations [21]. The process instigates social, technological and organizational change at a collective and individual levels [9, 18, 37, 39]. In this respect, public organizations can benefit from digital transformation by improving their performance through innovative service delivery, increasing administrative efficiency while reducing costs. Conversely, for the citizens, the perceived benefits include better service quality, placing them at the center of an emerging digital society [31, 39].
2.2 Digital Transformation Objectives
Digital transformation affects the way governments manage data so as to develop new forms of service delivery, aiming to enhance citizens’ satisfaction [1, 25]. This implies new ways of direct communication with the citizens in order to adapt services to their changing needs [18]. As attested by [40], outcome service quality can be improved by digitally assisted delivery to complement the traditional offline and analogue channels. This omnichannel, citizen-centric paradigm can set the basis for inclusive participative governance that strengthens democracy [31].
Culture: Digital transformation entails the change of the existing bureaucratic traditions to a culture of innovation by continuous improvement by upskilling existing human resources and services [5, 6, 18, 37]. Within this context, digital technology can provide the communication infrastructure needed to shift towards a more collaborative, transparent and agile working environment with interdisciplinary information flow.
Relationships – structure: As new ways of working and communicating are introduced organizational structure changes, inducing a subsequent change in the internal and external relationships [18]. Specifically, the technological affordances entailed by digitalization can reduce the specificity of administrative practices, eliminating logistical, expertise and administrational silos. Thus, interoperable systems and technologies can integrate relationships between and across the different organizational arrangements, diffusing accountability horizontally [26, 39]. Seamless vertical and horizontal communication through digital means, enhances the speed and efficiency of operations while reducing costs. The change in business models is brought about by digital transformation, to accommodate the changes of communication channels and service delivery according to citizens’ needs [18, 26].
2.3 Co-creation relevance to digital transformation
Co-creation literature emphasizes citizens’ active involvement in the design and delivery of services [28]. Digitalization offers increased accessibility enhancing service delivery quality on one hand [33], while it provides the environment and capabilities for citizens’ to interact with their government, collectively shaping their public value outcomes [18, 30]. Decentralized interactions and peer-to-peer innovative service delivery are also possible [13] delegating service accountability to the citizens in alignment with co-creation citizen-centricity [24, 33].
Organizational culture: Openness and participative workplace culture where citizens’ input is encouraged and valued from all levels and sources, can enable the co-creation of innovative public value outcomes, thus, disrupting the established hierarchical organizational traditions [16, 28, 32].
Relationships -structure: Flawless communication across internal and external organizational boundaries incentivize co-creation as a distributed leadership approach for collaborative problem-solving [18, 28, 33]. Citizens’ input can therefore transfer seamlessly throughout organizational structures, enabling citizen-centric, holistic and timely response mechanisms, thus amplifying its impact on outcome public values.
The shift in the existing business models can embrace co-creation through the citizen-centric logic of re-engineering the value creation processes with the use of digital technology [36]. Digital platform-based models stand at the core of this transformation as shared virtual spaces stimulating value co-creation of services through multilateral interactions of broad citizen groups [28, 32]. In this context, social media platforms can be part of digital platform strategies encouraging citizens’ real-time spontaneous interactions. Moreover, data-driven models imply integrated government data-informed approach on policies and services by obtaining continuous feedback data from citizens and iterating service improvements accordingly [40].
2.4 Digital Transformation Frameworks
We chose to explore frameworks dwelling on the public administration domain, specifically related to public values as they better fit the scope of the study given the important differences between private and public value in citizens’ motivations and the political and democratic nature of public sector [10, 22, 29].
A conceptual digital transformation framework for the public sector was developed by [17] based on identified limitations of existing representations in grey and scientific literature. The framework considers digital transformation at the macro-level, within the broader digital innovation research area and depicts its multi-dimensional nature by identifying endogenous and exogenous drivers and mechanisms in public service provision and delivery. In this context, digital transformation is described by the framework in terms of its three basic dimensions, namely; the effects of digital transformation on the lives and interactions of citizens with public infrastructure, the public organizations’ potential to change and the overarching digital transformation mission.
Mergel et. al, have put forward a digital transformation conceptual framework from the insider public organizations’ perspective, derived from empirical data coming from interviewed expert officials [18]. As such, it depicts digital transformation at a small scale, as an evolving causal process, focusing on its individual components. In doing so, its drivers are explored as external and internal pressure factors. Consequently, the transformation process within the public organization is unfolded, indicating the areas subjected to digital reform as transformation objects. Further, value creation is explored as the transformation outcome. The conflated terms digitization and digitalization are also defined as the evolving digital transformation stages, thus providing an implicit conceptual clarification in this regard. The framework suggests its relevance to S-D logic as of pointing out the hyper-connectedness and collaboration potential of digital technologies in supporting value co-creation.
Panagiotopoulos et. al have developed a conceptual framework of public value creation in digital government by viewing digital technologies and organizational factors as mediators of the digital transformation process [22]. Specifically, the framework depicts the combined influence of technology and organizational capabilities on the public services. Each service corresponds to a specific value obtained by its consumption and the aggregated outcome of the consumption of all the service offerings by the citizens is the resulting public value. However, since this framework entails consumption of services it implicitly focuses on public value co-production. Co-creation is regarded as an external configuration which can be initialized when organizational capabilities cannot be developed internally.
A more theoretical approach was attempted by [26], conceptualizing digital transformation as a high-level service ecosystem wherein interconnected stakeholders integrate resources and co-create value through service exchange. The suggested emergentist framework conceptualization explains digital transformation in terms of the synchronic and diachronic conditions that contribute to change. To this end, three identified causal mechanisms were elaborated: compression, ecotonal coupling and refraction, denoting the consolidation and interconnectedness of government structures and the historical trajectories of institutions and technology alike.
3 Towards a co-creation-aligned digital transformation framework
As it can be seen in the literature review, within the t-government paradigm, where roles and relationships of the involved actors are shifting towards a collaborative, citizen-centric participatory model, co-creation can enable interactive resource integration thus, facilitating positive outcome value and transformation to occur. However, the way co-creation can be applied within the dynamic digital transformation context remains unclear in the literature. In this study we aim to fill this gap by identifying how co-creation and digital transformation processes influence each other and how they can intertwine and evolve together in one integrated system framework. In doing so we will enrich an existing digital transformation framework with the features and characteristics of co-creation as well as with the relationships that develop through the interactions of these features and which specify resource integrations that may occur in view of enhancing public value outcomes.
We based our study on the selection of two peer-reviewed frameworks from the co-creation and digital transformation fields respectively which explicitly relate to communication. Relevant literature postulates not only that communication is essential for the public value co-creation [7, 33–35], but also that it stands at the intersection of the digital transformation and co-creation processes [13]. Building on this stream of thought, communication constitutes the basis of comparability of frameworks representing the digital transformation and co-creation processes. The co-creation framework [33] is developed through our previous work and depicts co-creation in terms of its input communication concepts as well as the enabling and constraining sociotechnical influence factors. Moreover, this framework provides explicit definitions for all its concepts grounded in the literature mitigating possible alignment ambiguities. Conversely, the [18] digital transformation framework was selected as it posits the communication element within the organisational environment. It provides a complete structured depiction of the main digital transformation features conceptualised as separate entities and situated along the stages of digital transformation. It can, therefore, relate to the functionalities of digital technologies by means of its systematically analysed communication attributes. Besides communication, the rationale behind this choice of frameworks was their compatibility based on their granularity, their causal structure and congruence of perspective on the part of the public organisation.
4 Method
We semantically aligned the frameworks by adapting the general steps of Noy and McGuinness [20]. Since this method enables flexibility, we further enriched it with detailed instructions for context-based alignment [4, 11], while also customizing step context to reflect the analysis conducted in this study. Therefore, we proceeded as follows:
Step 1: Determination of the domain and scope of the ontologies. We use ontologies from the co-creation and digital transformation domains respectively. The goal was to deepen our understanding of the two areas and contextually enrich the digital transformation framework with respect to co-creation.
Step 2: Use of existing ontologies: We selected two existing peer-reviewed frameworks on the basis of their common reference to the communication aspect as an anchor between both domains [4].
Step 3: Registration of terms related to the fields of interest: The main elements of both frameworks were identified and compared in terms of their differences and commonalities (overlaps), to assess their overall merging potential as suggested by [11]. We illustrate these conceptual overlaps in Figure 1 to provide a graphic representation of the strength of correlation of the two frameworks [4].
Step 4: Defining classes and creating hierarchical structures: Figure 2 shows the structured ontologies derived from the respective conceptual frameworks. It essentially shows high-level classes, subclasses and instances arranged across two hierarchical structures representing each domain.
Step 5: Identify relationships between classes: Following the previous step, the correspondence relations between the different entities were identified based on their semantic compliance. In this step, we followed the general principles of ontology alignment [4] and semantic heterogeneity resolution [8]. Further, we defined their degree of compliance by assessing their given descriptions in order to find common references irrespective of their taxonomy [2, 3]. The type of semantic compliance between the entities of the two domains is described using the following relations: equality (=), abstraction (≥), specificity (≤), equal but opposite (≠) and overlapping (∩). Finally, in order to provide a uniform view of the global digital transformation schema the observed differences were resolved by modifying the existing concepts and relationships or by adding new ones to make sense of the data.
5 Aligning the co-creation and digital transformation frameworks
In this section, we explore the semantic similarities of the framework concepts. Using a visual overview of these conceptual overlaps (shown in Figure 1), we empirically assess the suitability for semantic alignment of the two selected frameworks. We further align the two derived ontologies by articulating the set of semantic correspondences between their elements, shown in Figure 2. As semantic alignment is pre-requisite for ontology merging this alignment elaboration sets the basis for a coherent and accurate merged ontology of the two domains [4, 5].
5.1 Conceptual overlaps of the two frameworks.
Figure 1 shows the conceptual overlaps based on the semantic similarity of concepts of the two frameworks. It provides a visualisation of the relationships between concepts in order to identify conceptual pairs. Following are given descriptions and the rationale of the observed conceptual overlaps:
•
The external citizens’ input in [33] framework partly overlaps with “External” (pressure from the environment) as seen in Figure 1. However, abstraction conflict is detected as the “Pressure from Environment” encompasses wider concepts. Of these, “politics” corresponds to “political support” in [33] framework.
•
The external citizens’ input in [33] framework partly overlaps with “External” (pressure from the environment) as seen in Figure 1. However, abstraction conflict is detected as the “Pressure from Environment” encompasses wider concepts. Of these, “politics” corresponds to “political support” in [33] framework.
•
The internal pressure concept does not directly relate to any entities form the co-creation network.
•
Bureaucratic culture is described in [18] as the perception of citizens roles and corresponds to the “administrative tradition” concept. However, the first concept assumes a positive change whereas the second implies a negative change as it belongs to the constraints class.
Figure 1:
Figure 1: Visual representation of the conceptual overlaps on the digital transformation frameworkFigure 1: Visual representation of the conceptual overlaps on the digital transformation framework
•
Mindset and competencies refer to the way of thinking and skills required within the public organization to achieve digital transformation. Corresponding concepts are included in the co-creation framework, namely the “openness” and the “lack of trained personnel” respectively. While the “openness” concept can be considered a sub-concept of the more abstract “Mindset”, the “Lack of trained personnel” describes “competencies” from the opposite perspective.
•
Organization is the term encompassing the functions and structure of the public organization affected by the digital transformation process. The corresponding concept “Fractured organizational silos” denotes the absence of workflows and continuous internal procedures in an organization. Therefore, it is considered a sub-concept of organization. Moreover, a relevant concept denoting the integration of processes and roles within the organization is the “Public sector transformation” which corresponds to induced changes in internal processes and business model.
•
All technical enablers described in the co-creation process model imply the use of digital technology, therefore the two concepts can be considered relevant. It is assumed that technology is a broader term encompassing technical enablers within it, as it is illustrated in Figure 1.
•
The concept “increase absorptive capacity” is related to improved public services and a sub-relation between them can be assumed.
•
Digitized relationships refer to the use of digital communication functionalities in order to change the relationships with citizens. Therefore, by extending this definition, a relation can be established with digital communication as it enables the change in government to citizens relationships.
•
The “Digitized processes” concept denotes the digitization of processes, procedures and workflows within an organization. It is therefore suggested that the “Digitized processes” and “communication” concepts overlap, and the “Digital” part of the communication concept can be declared as their conjoint concept.
•
A respective semantic overlap was noted in terms of the analogue instance of the communication concepts. Direct communication was instantiated from the communication concept to enable meaningful positioning of the co-creation concept within the organizational environment.
•
By definition, the outcome public values in the co-creation framework include long-term outcome and short-term output and impact, therefore the corresponding concepts are included within the broader “Outcome public value” concept.
In conclusion, as seen in Figure 1, two concepts, namely “Communication” and “Technical enablers” fully overlap between the two frameworks while only one concept, (namely “internal pressure”) cannot be semantically related to the co-creation framework. The rest of the entities of the two frameworks partially overlap. These results point to the eligibility of the two frameworks for further alignment in view of a contextually rich merged framework.
5.2 Framework alignment
Figure 2 illustrates the conceptual matches of the two frameworks indicating their semantic compliance. Specifically, two instance-level entities were formed from the communication concept construct namely “analogue” and “digital” to denote the transformation objects and the means of digital transformation process respectively, thereby establishing indirect matches with these digital transformation entities. Also, “Direct communication” was instantiated from the “communication” class to connect the co-creation process with communication and through it with the internal organizational processes. As of its role and position in the ontology as shown in Figure 2 it is regarded as a mediating entity. Specifically, [7] argues that direct communication can enable the public organization to actively influence the interacting stakeholders and therefore to actively contribute to the co-creation of public value. This viewpoint is also supported by [13]. The dotted connection lines in Figure 2 denote that the connection of “direct communication” with the “communication” entity and the “co-creation” process can influence the relations of the communication-specific instances “analogue” and “digital” shown as plain arrows in Figure 2. This is because direct interaction can emerge at the intersection of their common attributes as they are analyzed by [33]. Therefore, practically, when direct interaction is on, the values of “analogue” and “digital” are limited to offline/ online and synchronous.
As the “social enablers” of the co-creation framework refer to both internal and external social factors, two instances were formulated to correspond with the “internal” and “external” pressure of the digital transition framework. These are shown in Figure 2 as indirect connections of the respective entities to the “social enablers” entity. The identified definition mismatches for “relationships” and “develop new competencies” described in the previous section, are shown in figure 2 with the appropriate annotation. The structure of the co-creation ontology can indicate the reason for their mismatch as they are included in “social constraints”.
As it can be observed from the linked entities and their definitions, the linking of more abstract concepts nested in the digital transformation framework to more specific ones coming from the co-creation framework, while acknowledging their inclusivity, bears added accuracy in the descriptions of the entities and in turns in the description of the digital transformation framework.
As can be seen from Figure 2, the high-level entity “social constraints” from the co-creation framework could not correspond to any objects from the digital transformation ontology. The fact that by reference to [18] their framework reflects the inter-organisational perceptions of digital transformation and is based on data collected from the organisational environment, which could account for this limitation. However, as the relevant scholarly debate apprises of the “techno-optimism” stance [14, 30], the need to consider barriers and negative effects relating to the digital transformation process is evident.
Moreover, the large-scale digital transformation framework refers to the organisational environment and its embedded resources (such as processes, relationships, and services) in order to demonstrate the induced transformational effects on them. However, as seen in Figure 2, the entities of the local, small-scaled co-creation framework correspond to all high-level digital transformation entities either directly or indirectly by means of the subsumed entities. Practically, this means that changes in the resources of the digital transformation framework can influence the respective co-creation linked components. This degree of conceptual correspondence illustrates the contextual nature of the co-creation process as theoretically introduced by [35] and stresses the need for a merged framework to encompass and explore the two processes holistically.
Figure 2:
Figure 2: Alignment of the ontologies of the two frameworks indicating their relations.Figure 2: Alignment of the ontologies of the two frameworks indicating their relations.
5.3 Implications
The study's contributions to the field are discussed in terms of their practical and theoretical significance.
•
The conceptual alignment of the two frameworks can enable the integrative consideration of two co-creation processes which may take place at the same time in a public organization; one which involves the public organisation as a co-creator engaging the citizens as resources in the co-creation process, and one involving the citizens as co-creators in which the public organization's role is service provider. These simultaneous processes which are conceptualized by [7] can be performed with the addition of the “direct communication” as it enables the public organisation's co-creating capability.
•
The observed unpaired higher-level entities “social constraints” and “technical constraints” of the co-creation framework indicated the respective weaknesses of the digital transformation framework in overlooking potential digital transformation setbacks. These unpaired entities can constitute areas of complementarity and improvement in future research.
•
The observed semantic similarities of the two frameworks, prompted to the direct or indirect linking of entities thereby, adding conceptual clarity to their definitions.
•
In response to calls for elimination of conceptual fuzziness, of the related digital transformation and co-creation research areas [29], the study employed novel alignment approach in representing the ontological relations of the two frameworks as conceptual overlaps, which facilitated the critical evaluation of their semantic interoperability, during the alignment process.
•
From a practical standpoint, the framework alignment can capture the effects of digital transformation on the public value co-creation process, by relating co-creation components to digital transformation stages on the basis of the changes induced to organizational resources. This relational “map” can be useful for the management of digital government operations increasing understanding on co-creation initiative planning, thereby increasing governments’ resilience and ability to tackle present and future complex socioeconomic challenges.
•
As can be seen in Figure 2, the co-creation elements are paired along the distributed digital transformation environment. The resulting framework alignment represents more than a plain component aggregation of the two frameworks, rather, it represents the stages of the digital transformation process holding the heterogeneous elements together by means of their semantic relations [19, 38]. In it, co-creation is framed not as a static event, rather, it emerges as a continuous process, embedded and coordinated within the digital transformation context. This representation compliments the S-D logic paradigm in viewing t-government as a service ecosystem that co-creates public value by integrating organizational and institutional resources through technology-mediated communication.
6 Conclusions
This research introduces co-creation within the transformational government through communication. In doing so, it compares and aligns a digital transformation framework with a public value co-creation framework anchoring them on communication as their common reference concept. A novel ontology-matching approach was used to capture the semantic compliances between the elements of these frameworks. This was done by considering the definitions and intended meaning of the co-creation concepts with regard to their digital transformation pairings irrespective of the taxonomy of the ontologies as suggested by [15].
Practically, this meaningful coordination of the co-creation elements along the different stages of digital transformation can filter the “noise” of the deployment of digital technologies within a public organization, promoting a focus on its co-creation potential, thus optimizing organizational efficiency and positive public value. Insert a picture in the document.
In conclusion, this study contributes to the extant research by demonstrating a way to align co-creation with digital transformation through communication, thus setting the foundation for a future meaningful merged framework of the two systems. The proposed aligned framework lacks empirical grounding therefore, future validation is required to investigate how co-creation-aligned digital transformation can be implemented in organizational settings.
Further research may involve broad framework synthesis based on a more systematic search and assessment of comparable frameworks from both fields to investigate further the role of communication in terms of the organizational value-in-context. Moreover, further scholarly attention could be focused on the value-in-context of the public organizations (digital operant and operand resources) in terms of their impact on the citizens. Insights on how citizens perceive and integrate into their lives these resources could enable informed co-creation strategies which could better respond and adapt to citizens’ preferences so as to maximize co-creation process potential.
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