Luonila, Mervi and Jyrämä, Annukka: Adapting the co-creational perspective to artistic field

In the article ‘Does co-production build on co-creation or does co-creation result in co-producing?’ Luonila & Jyrämä (forthcoming) present a thorough conceptual analysis on the concepts of co-production, co-creation and their relationship building from the discussions on service dominant logic, networks and Service dominant Logic (SDL) discussions. They focused particularly on the perspective of art and arts management. Their critical study questions the understandings and relationship between co-production and co-creation in the context of the art field. One of the key findings of the study point out the vital role of understanding the roles of expert and non-expert actors with co-production and co-creation.

Luonila and Jyrämä (ibid.) argue that the context of value creation can be better taken into account through different network relationships, enabling better identification of actors and their roles in the context of the arts. Moreover, their findings challenge the current assumption that the value of co-creation is always positive. The discussion sheds light on the importance of relationships between different levels and actors and mechanisms of action in value creation processes. They emphasize the role of non-expert consumers as co-creators. This study deepens the analysis with some empirical examples.

This study continues the conceptual analysis. We continue the discussion with two novel perspectives: First, the purpose of the study is to focus on the role of expert and non-expert actors in the discourse of value co-creation and co-production. Second, the aim of the paper is to build a stronger conceptualization on the context; how can its role be measured in co-creation or co-production activity. F. ex. the various levels, i.e. environment, network and actor as context are elaborated in this paper.