Emerging Sustainability and Co-Creation Perspectives in Public Sector Governance The Case of Zimbabwe

Abstract

Globally, sustainability and co-creation perspectives are emerging as success factors for effective public sector service delivery. Sustainability exhorts public institutions to embrace governance practices that are fair to both present and future generations, while co-creation perspectives reinforce sustainability by calling for government collaboration with citizens to enable joint design and production of goods and services. Utilising New Public Governance and Public Value theoretical frameworks, this study undertook systematic reviews of relevant experiences in selected countries in a bid to create a basis for interpreting the dynamics affecting the uptake of sustainability and co-creation perspectives in the public sectors in Zimbabwe, using the mining and energy sectors as principal case studies. Study findings indicate that although sustainability and co-creation practices are taking root across public sectors in Zimbabwe, more needs to be done to fast-track the sustainability and co-creation transformation while ensuring policy prioritisation is aligned with addressing citizen service gaps. Environmental protection and citizen welfare were found to be critical in guaranteeing the success of sustainability and co-creation in the mining and energy sectors. In both the mining and energy sectors, the Japanese culture-informed Sanpo-Yoshi principle emerged as one of the strategies that can smoothen the development of participant governance. Particularly critical is the need for a coherent policy framework that sets the right tone for the uptake of sustainability and co-creation. Open, collaborative, decentralised, and generative governance need to be cascaded to key sectors of the economy to allow the establishment of a robust framework for co-creation and sustainability.