{"id":470,"date":"2025-10-24T09:31:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/?p=470"},"modified":"2025-10-24T09:31:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:31:06","slug":"book-chapter-relational-service-design-and-new-public-management-navigating-a-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/24\/book-chapter-relational-service-design-and-new-public-management-navigating-a-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"Book chapter: Relational Service Design and New Public Management: Navigating a Paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Marlieke Kieboom and I recently wrote a chapter for the book Futures in Public Management &#8211; The Emerging Relational Approach to Public Services, edited by Rob Wilson, Max French and colleagues. The book discusses the prevailing orthodoxy of public service management which is that it should be marketized, commissioned, contracted, managed, measured, and evaluated.\u00a0<em>Futures in Public Management<\/em>\u00a0introduces and develops the alternative argument that the objectives for and outcomes sought by institutions working with the public in contexts of health, care and welfare are inherently relational phenomena &#8211; they are always complex and cross-boundary, always co-produced by the individuals who experience them through interaction with those who are delivering them in relationship with those providing help\/support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the book chapter, Marlieke and I explore what this means for the design of relational services. Relational public services require a relational service design approach, yet the complexity of this approach is rarely acknowledged, and examples of its application in public administration literature are few and far between. This issue challenges the design of relational public services: designing with the status quo leads to designs for and of the status quo. To bridge the gap, the chapter develops a new typology and practice of relational public service design. The typology distinguishes between designing for relational services and service designing as relating. The former emphasises the role of relationships in the service outcome of public service design processes, while the latter focuses on relating in the role and practices of designers who are service designing. An auto-ethnographic case study of Marlieke&#8217;s work in British Columbia (Canada-Turtle Island) illustrates this typology, but also depicts the challenge of designing relationally in a complex, non-relational public administration context, in this case a (New Public Management, NPM) paradigm. We demonstrate that public relational service design practice can not take hold as long as designers and public managers are not aware of NPM&#8217;s dominance, precisely because NPM promotes and requires &#8216;unrelationality&#8217;, creating a complex paradox. The book is available via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/books\/edited-volume\/17465\/Futures-in-Public-ManagementThe-Emerging\">Emerald publishers<\/a>. A preprint of the book chapter can be accessed on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/389937645_Relational_Service_Design_and_New_Public_Management_Navigating_a_Paradox\">Researchgate<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marlieke Kieboom and I recently wrote a chapter for the book Futures in Public Management &#8211; The Emerging Relational Approach to Public Services, edited by Rob Wilson, Max French and colleagues. The book discusses the prevailing orthodoxy of public service management which is that it should be marketized, commissioned, contracted, managed, measured, and evaluated.\u00a0Futures in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Book chapter: Relational Service Design and New Public Management: Navigating a Paradox &#187; mieke | van der bijl | brouwer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/24\/book-chapter-relational-service-design-and-new-public-management-navigating-a-paradox\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book chapter: Relational Service Design and New Public Management: Navigating a Paradox &#187; mieke | van der bijl | brouwer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Marlieke Kieboom and I recently wrote a chapter for the book Futures in Public Management &#8211; The Emerging Relational Approach to Public Services, edited by Rob Wilson, Max French and colleagues. 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