Ethics and Ethos

Service ethics are the determinant of morality that focuses and upholds some shared approach on what is right and wrong in professional norms and behavior. It is distinct from law and individual values and might conflict with those.

True open dialogues that take into account for time and place for joint reflexivity, involving sense-giving and sense-taking activities challenge professional ethics. An important aspect in this pilot is to develop and co-create a common service ethics, within the juridical framework and taking account to service users need. There is a particular challenge to monitor conflictual organisational values (personal schemes and users best).

In the CoSIE project we have been preoccupied with such public (welfare) services that are associated with care, well-being and development as the long-term values which are ultimately aimed for. Such services require establishing a shared understanding with the end user of the particular goals he/she has with the service to meet their important needs. The exchange becomes relational as it requires trust, commitment and awareness of rights and dependencies and the sharing of power and control.

A transactional service is defined entirely in terms of clearly determinable qualifications conditions and explicitly defined processes and outputs. That is to say it is a procedure to be followed which may be complex but which is assumed to be completely defined.

A relational service is defined not only in terms of outputs that can be verified but also in terms of intended outcomes. These cannot be measured but can only be reported and deliberated. Relational services involve having real conversations with the client, which cannot be reduced to a standard, completely predefined script.

Achieving inclusive co-creation in disability services in Jönköping pilot they adopted a particular ethical approach based on:

• Humanistic, asset based approach to each human being as valuable and possessing valuable assets in co-creating service improvements/innovations
• Willingness and ability to share power to the service beneficiary and trust her judgement and abilities
• Health promoting approach aiming at improvements that serve to increase individual’s well-being, health and control over their lives
• Deep listening in communicating  – to see and hear individual, by capturing, translating and assessing the less visible messages of each individual, especially in dependency.

Examples of co-creation ethics in the Jönköping pilot are:

• Accepting user participation and influence (co-determination) as a desirable norm
• Accepting the need to equalize power imbalance as a norm to strive after, and live after
• Seeing attentiveness to each user and ability to active and deep listening in the interphase with the user as a norm to strive after, as professional abilities that need to be developed.

“Co-creation requires reflexivity about ones’ values and perspectives”. Listen to pilot representatives explain it: https://youtu.be/499HVyT0WKM (0-1 min)