P20 Strengthening prevention and increasing resilience of service users, communities and public services through digital participatory approaches

Panel chairs

Corresponding Chair

Elke Loeffler (Senior Lecturer, The Open University, UK): elke.loeffler@open.ac.uk

Review Group Chair

Sabina De Rosis, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy: sabina.derosis@santannapisa.it

Co-Chairs

Prof. Tina Foster, Dartmouth College, USA

Prof. Bin Chen, City University of New York, USA

Dr. André Lino, University of Essex, UK

Description:

This panel invites abstracts and papers from academics and practitioners on digital participatory approaches which are likely to lead to strengthened crisis prevention and increased resilience of service users, communities and public services in the face of crisis.

Resilience encompasses “the capacity for adaptation in the service system to recover to the same or higher outcomes after a disturbance” (Bovaird and Quirk, 2017). Extant literature acknowledges that prevention measures attempt to reduce the likelihood of crises in the first instance, while resilience involves absorptive, reactive and preventive capabilities. Absorptive and reactive aspects of resilience help service users, communities and public service organisations to better cope with the crises/disturbances when they occur. Prevention, as a proactive component of resilience, aims to avoid or minimise the likelihood of future crises/disturbances. The panel will explore how digital participatory approaches can enhance prevention strategies and can support overall resilience by strengthening all three of its components.

Participatory approaches range along a spectrum from public consultation to co-production (Loeffler and Martin 2024). They might involve, for example, local online platforms enabling residents to participate in public decisions (Naranjo et al. 2019), online peer support groups (Lember 2018), smart city projects (Meijer and Bolivar, 2016) or living labs (Gasco 2016).

The participatory approaches concerned may involve service users, their networks, or the communities in which they live. The emphasis of the panel will be on digital approaches which help to tackle all stages of the problem-solving cycle, from mapping of potential upcoming crises, co-designing crisis-prevention strategies, identification of early-stage crises, fostering absorptive and reactive resilience capacities to cope with the problems caused by crises, and learning lessons for future crisis prevention and resilience strategies.

We are particularly interested in exploring the tension between digital technologies enabling more effective participatory approaches but also hindering participation by those who lack the resources or skills to use them effectively (i.e. exclusion versus inclusion). We are also interested in innovative digital participation approaches which are likely to increase public value for service users (e.g. their quality-of-life outcomes), communities (e.g. social capital) and service providers (e.g. financial sustainability) – and ideally for all three kinds of stakeholder, in a whole systems approach. Crises could include issues such as serious illness, relationship breakdown, relapse into substance abuse, loss of jobs or housing, public service cuts, collapse of a public service provider, or the outbreak of a pandemic. While some crises may only impact service users, communities or public service providers other crises such as a pandemic will typically cut across many stakeholders and organisations.

We encourage papers which focus conceptually on drivers of and barriers to the development and implementation of (digital) participation approaches, as well as empirical research on the impact of these interventions on preventive capacities and resilience more broadly. Furthermore, the panel encourages an inter-disciplinary dialogue as well as international comparisons of digital participatory approaches.

We welcome papers that adopt various research methodologies, based on a wide range of theoretical and conceptual standpoints, including internationally comparative studies. Papers may draw on new public governance (Osborne, 2006), public value concepts (Benington and Moore 2011; Hartley et al. 2017), collaborative governance (Emerson et al. 2012; Ansell and Gash, 2008), behaviour change (James, van Ryzin and Jilke 2017), place-based policies (Bennett, 2018) and resilience (Boin and Lodge, 2016; Bovaird and Loeffler, 2024).

Abstracts and papers may therefore address research questions such as:

• What are the theoretical mechanisms by which (digital) participatory approaches promote prevention and user/community/organisational resilience?
• What conceptual frameworks allow rigorous exploration of the level and effectiveness of prevention and absorptive/reactive resilience approaches by public service organisations and citizens?
• To what extent can digital technologies enable participation at scale in prevention and resilience approaches and to what extent are they barriers to social inclusion and equity?
• How can we conceptualise prevention and/or resilience as the remedy for an uncertain future, based on the lessons emerging from different literatures, such as crisis management, resilience, public value and public governance?
• What are the theoretical mechanisms by which prevention and/or resilience approaches promote public value for multiple stakeholders?
• What conceptual frameworks can be used to explore rigorously the level and quality of implementation of digital prevention and/or resilience approaches from the perspective of different stakeholders, including citizens?
• How can we conceptualize the multiple outcomes from prevention and/or resilience approaches in public service organisations and the synergy between them (including economies of scope, scale and learning) – and how can the relationships between these outcomes be explored by empirical research?
• Which strategies are available for promoting the key drivers and overcoming the key obstacles to prevention approaches?
• How can public agencies in a context of austerity be motivated to develop or scale prevention approaches?
• How do the reactive, absorptive and preventive capabilities of resilience differ and how can they be integrated across the individual service user, community, and service provider levels? What implications do these differences have for developing comprehensive resilience strategies in the public sector?

The above list of questions is not exhaustive – other perspectives are welcome.

Panel format

The panel will consist of paper presentations with a pre-allocated discussant and creative interactive sessions in order to develop new joint research projects and academic dialogue.  In particular, all paper givers will be invited to prepare at least one question for the audience, in order to benefit from the expertise and international perspectives in the room. All participants will be provided with the opportunity to provide brief written feedback to paper givers in order to maximise feedback and networking.

Contact us:

Informal inquiries about abstracts, papers or panel sessions can be made to all panelists:

Bin Chen, email: bin.chen@baruch.cuny.edu

Sabina De Rosis, email: sabina.derosis@santannapisa.it

André Lino, email: andre.lino@essex.ac.uk

Tina Foster, email: Tina.C.Foster@dartmouth.edu

Elke Loeffler, email: elke.loeffler@open.ac.uk