The spontaneous creation of public value: Open digital collaboration among public professionals
Résumé
This article presents a study aimed to understand the role and effect of spontaneity in public value creation (PVC) by examining the process of spontaneous collaboration within open professional digital spaces (PDSs) in which public professionals interact regarding professional topics. It first describes the existing research that contributed to the construction of our research question and framework. It next examines the significance of focusing on spontaneous collaboration to study PVC in the digital era context. Using a framework built on process analysis, this study scrutinizes three microcases observed within two PDSs clustering public professionals working in the public territorial sector in France. The results show that first, in the context of open professional digital spaces, spontaneous collaboration could achieve PVC, although not systematically, and second, a balance between the spontaneity of demands and the spontaneity of responses is necessary for concretizing actors’ spontaneity in PVC. The paper ends by suggesting further research avenues regarding spontaneous digital collaboration among public professional with the purpose of PVC.