The role of mutuals in public service innovation

Over the past five years mutuals and other forms of employee or user owned organisations have been portrayed and promoted as vehicles for innovation and the improvement of public services. Yet there is a danger that policy is being advanced on the basis of very limited evidence ignoring the complexities and challenges involved in transitions from state provided services to spun-out mutual forms and shared ownership. Within this context, this study aims to provide a rigorous evidence base concerning the role of spin-out mutuals in promoting innovation in public services in the UK.
The study will examine the process and nature of innovation in public service delivery as enabled by such organisations in health and social services. It will adopt a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies with a detailed study of 30 organisations and their different stakeholders.
The study will examine the different types of innovations observed, identify crucial facilitating factors and barriers to innovations, and assess their effectiveness and impacts as perceived by users and other stakeholders.This will provide a high quality evidence base for spin-out organisations as well as scholars, policy makers and support providers interested in recent spin-out developments.