‘Co-production on the inside’ – public professionals negotiating interaction between municipal actors and local citizens

A growing number of public professionals are now expected to facilitate co-production processes with affected citizens to produce robust policies and services. Yet the role of ‘front-line co-producers’ and how their mindset and ability to cope with the cross-pressures affects co-production remains under-theorised and empirically understudied in the scholarly literature. The article provides concepts and empirical evidence of how ‘frontline co-producers’ navigate cross-pressures by exploring the enabling and inhibiting factors for co-production. Empirically, we draw on a case study of a Danish municipality consisting of qualitative interviews with 18 public professionals at different levels, all of whom have experience working with co-production. The findings contribute to the small but growing academic literature on the role of public professionals in co-production and how their individual-level practices, together with organisational and management factors, can enable or inhibit ‘co-production on the outside’.