Why Improvements Fail in Public Service Ecosystems: Meso-Level Value Co-destruction

Journal article, 2026

Why do improvement initiatives in public service ecosystems fail, even when individual actors are competent and well-intentioned? This article argues that such failures are not merely the product of isolated organizational deficiencies but are influenced by a configurational dynamic.our meso-level mechanisms—lack of direction, lack of management support, lack of autonomy, mandate, and ownership, and insufficient knowledge management—interact in a self-reinforcing cycle that converts localized value failure into systemic value decline. Drawing on a four-year longitudinal study of an improvement program in Sweden’s sick leave system, we identify a lack of management support as the primary mechanism for escalation, and the withdrawal of organizational legitimacy and resources prevent corrective responses to other failures. We further demonstrate that this cycle is reproduced by a structural ownership gap at the macro-level: because no single actor holds both the mandate and the incentive to claim stewardship of cross-boundary public services, the meso-level conditions necessary for sustained improvement are never stabilized. The implication is that meso-level value co-destruction in public service ecosystems cannot be addressed by improving individual mechanisms in isolation; it requires resolving the governance architecture that makes the self-reinforcing cycle inevitable.