Background: Due to an increasingly elderly population, a higher incidence of chronic diseases and higher expectations regarding public service provision, healthcare services are under increasing strain to cut costs while maintaining quality. The importance of promoting systems of co-produced health between stakeholders has gained considerable traction both in the literature and in public sector policy debates. This study provides a comprehensive map of the extant literature and identifies the main themes and future research needs. Methods: A quantitative bibliometric analysis was carried out consisting of a performance analysis, science mapping, and a scientific collaboration analysis. Web of Science (WoS) was chosen to extract the dataset; the search was refined by language, i.e. English, and type of publication, i.e. journal academic articles and reviews. No time limitation was selected. Results: The dataset is made up of 295 papers ranging from 1994 to May 2019. The analysis highlighted an annual percentage growth rate in the topic of co-production of about 25%. The articles retrieved are split between 1225 authors and 148 sources. This fragmentation was confirmed by the collaboration analysis, which revealed very few long-lasting collaborations. The scientific production is geographically polarised within the EU and Anglo-Saxon countries, with the United Kingdom playing a central role. The intellectual structure consists of three main areas: public administration and management, service management and knowledge translation literature. The co-word analysis confirms the relatively low scientific maturity of co-production applied to health services. It shows few well-developed and central terms, which refer to traditional areas of co-production (e.g. public health, social care), and some emerging themes related to social and health phenomena (e.g. the elderly and chronic diseases), the use of technologies, and the recent patient-centred approach to care (patient involvement/engagement). Conclusions: The field is still far from being mature. Empirical practices, especially regarding co-delivery and co-management as well as the evaluation of their real impacts on providers and on patients are lacking and should be more widely investigated.

Purpose: Understanding the outcomes of co-creation (CC) in healthcare is increasingly gaining multidisciplinary scientific interest. Although more and more service management scholars have pointed out the benefits of cross-fertilization between the various research fields, the literature on this topic is still scattered and poorly integrated. This study aims to summarize and integrate multiple strands of extant knowledge CC by identifying the outcomes of health CC and the determinants of these outcomes and their relationships.Design/methodology/approach: A structured literature review was conducted per PRISMA guidelines. A total of 4,189 records were retrieved from the six databases; 1,983 articles were screened, with 161 included in the qualitative thematic analysis.Findings: This study advances a comprehensive framework for healthcare CC based on a thorough analysis of the outcomes and their determinants, that is, antecedents, management activities and institutional context. Extant research rarely evaluates outcomes from a multidimensional and systemic perspective. Less attention has been paid to the relationship among the CC process elements.Research limitations/implications: This study offers an agenda to guide future studies on healthcare CC. Highlighting some areas of integration among different disciplines further advances service literature.Practical implications: The framework offers an operational guide to better shape managerial endeavors to facilitate CC, provide direction and assess multiple outcomes.Originality/value: This is the first extensive attempt to synthesize and integrate multidisciplinary knowledge on CC outcomes in healthcare settings by adopting a systematic perspective on the overall process.

This paper explores the motivational frame of Italian young adults involved in volunteerism and its relation to several variables included in Omoto and Snyder’s Volunteer Process Model framework. Some 461 Italian young adults (aged 24–31) involved in voluntary activities with children and adolescents were considered. Referring to Omoto and Snyder’s functionalist and motivational framework, a Ward’s method cluster analysis was performed to identify specific patterns of motivations originating from the aggregation of 4 factors of motivation (social, career, ego-protective, and values) measured with the Voluntary Function Inventory (VFI). The results show that young volunteers are inspired by a distinctive and composite pattern of motivations, including both self and other-oriented motivations. Multiple motivations underlying the activities are associated to satisfaction and good integration in the organization confirming that people spurred by more than one motivation are less vulnerable to costs related to the activity and are more likely to maintain a longer involvement.

Workplace aggression is a critical phenomenon particularly in the healthcare sector, where nurses are especially at risk of bullying and third-party aggression. While workplace aggression has been frequently examined in relation to health problems, less is known about the possible negative impact such aggression may have on the (un)ethical behavior of victims. Our research aims to fill this gap. Drawing on literature on counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and the social-cognitive literature on aggression we investigated in two independent studies (N_Study1 = 439; N_Study2 = 416), the role of negative emotions – in particular anger, fear, and sadness, – and of moral disengagement (MD) in the paths between workplace aggression, CWB and health symptoms. The focus on these relationships is rooted in two reasons. First, misbehavior at work is a pervasive phenomenon worldwide and second, little research has been conducted in the healthcare sector on this type of behavior despite the potential importance of the issue in this context. We empirically tested our hypotheses considering a specific form of workplace aggression in each study: workplace bullying or third-party aggression. Results from the two empirical studies confirm the hypotheses that being target of workplace aggression (bullying or third-party aggression) is not only associated with health symptoms but also with misbehavior. In addition, the results of structural equation modeling attest the importance of examining specific discrete negative emotions and MD for better understanding misbehavior at work. In particular, this research shows for the first time that anger, fear, and sadness, generally aggregated into a single dimension, are indeed differently associated with MD, misbehavior and health symptoms. Specifically, in line with the literature on discrete emotions, while sadness is only associated with health symptoms, anger and fear are related to both health and misbehavior.