Co-production and Service Quality: The Case of Cooperative Childcare in Sweden

This article compares results from a study of service quality in cooperative and municipal preschools. The parent cooperative and municipal childcare represents two different schools of thought with regard to service quality. The municipal services have a strong tradition of professionalism in which user participation is not allowed to interfere with the qualified work performed by trained professionals. The parent cooperatives have another tradition in which service quality is developed in a dialogue between users and staff while they co-produce the services together. The former tradition is the dominant one in the Swedish welfare state while the latter is an exception. The conclusion of the article is that service quality is better in the parent cooperative childcare in spite of the widespread assumption in Sweden that service quality is close to synonymous with professionalism.