Can co-production enhance professional public service provision? evidence from vocational training programme for people with disabilities in China

Recent research on professional services has sought to pay nuanced attention to the relationship between professionalism and public service performance. At the same time, existing literature has examined the role of co-production in local public service delivery but has primarily remained theoretical and qualitative, calling for more empirical testing. Bridging these two different streams of literature, this article is the first to investigate how co-production affects the performance of China’s vocational training service for disabled persons. Using cross-sectional data from the 2018 national survey conducted by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, our research shows that training institutions adopting a co-production approach are more likely to achieve higher employment rates (self-reported) among their trainees. Furthermore, multiple measures of professionalism are found to be positively associated with the employment outcomes of vocational training programmes. Implications for future research on professionalism and co-production in public service delivery are also discussed.