11. Public Service Systems: Meaningful Public Service

This chapter provides a snapshot of how meaningful public sector services are constructed by presenting the perspectives of Finnish public sector service professionals on the topic of customer value creation in meaningful work. The key focus is on how to create a service system that reliably creates value for service users with an understanding of things that are meaningful for them and that simultaneously enhances public sector employees’ perceived meaningfulness of work and, by doing so, addresses the need for public service system change as citizens’ needs change. In the context of meaningful public service systems and based on the empirical data analysis, we argue that public sector professionals’ perceived meaningfulness of work enhances the meaningfulness of public services. On the other hand, the role of management and leadership is to ensure the responsible, sustainable, public customer-oriented service development of meaningful public services by enabling employees’ perceived meaningfulness of work.