The ideational bases of public value co-creation and the philosophy of personalism: Why a relational conception of person matters for solving public problems

Public value co-creation has become one of the most relevant topics in the economic and social sciences in recent years. However, literature on the theme seems quite fragmented; we deem part of the explanation for why there seems not to be consensus on the definition of the nature of the processes of co-creation of value could and should be sought by querying what underlying ontology of the human being, philosophical anthropology and political philosophy underpin the entire value co-creation intellectual endeavour. We argue the strand of philosophy known as Personalism – developed by intellectuals such as Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier and Luigi Giussani – may contribute to outlining the ideational bases of public value co-creation and root them in a relational conception of the individual as person, an approach which compounds a ‘negative’ conception of freedom (whereby someone’s liberty ends where somebody else’s begins) with a ‘positive’ one (whereby someone’s liberty has a transformative influence on somebody else’s liberty), a conception which underpins a notion of freedom hinging around the core idea that persons develop and flourish through their mutual relationships, and a conception of the human being as socially dependent. The paper then analytically revisits key ideas in value co-creation - namely the notions of public value, value co-creation, collaboration, and participatory public policy - through the notions in philosophical personalism of common good, active citizenship, relational freedom for collaboration, and intermediate communities, in order to highlight parallels and conceptual affinities between the two bodies of thought.