Client organisations, as financiers, owners, and users, face the challenge of generating and delivering value outcomes for a wide range of stakeholders. However, research has demonstrated that projects constantly fall short of providing valuable outcomes in the medium- and long-term. The value outcomes start to appear in the latter stages of a project, yet, they have a link back to the project definition phase, where value outcomes can be purposely designed for the long-term. Value outcomes per se have been historically researched from a supplier and financial perspective. However, the research around the client perspective has been scarce, particularly the exploration of the co-creation of value outcomes for the longterm. To this end, the Service-Dominant Logic is an established framework to analyse the co-creation of value outcomes in the long-term from a client perspective. Thus, this framework is being used in this research to analyse six project case studies from two public sector client organisations in the United Kingdom. The results show eight managerial value interactions, which may enhance a set of five value outcomes from a client perspective in the medium- and long-term. Additionally, tensions around the co-creation process have been identified, which require management attention to secure and to defend the value outcomes. Overall, this study may prompt project practitioners to undertake a set of co-creation practices in order to formulate projects as service provision, as well as to avoid negative financial impacts to business models.

Introduction

Client organisations face the challenge of creating and delivering value outcomes for a wide range of project stakeholders and, ultimately, to society at large. Thus, client organisations are particularly interested in what the project can do for them in the long-term (Smyth, 2015). It then becomes critical the conceptualisation of value in the early stages of a project. One of the challenges when conceptualising value is, for example, dealing with different perceptions of value. Multiple and conflicting perspectives of value may be found at an early stage of a project, yet value outcomes should be (theoretically) anchored to the client, as it is the main stakeholder that absorbs the implications of value outcomes in the medium- and long-term. Value outcomes tend to start emerging in the latter stages of a project, yet these have a direct link to the conception of a project (front-end stage), where most of the value can be created, designed and configured (Morris, 2013). Once the conceptualisation phase is closed, most of the value outcomes have been locked-up, including the main benefits or sacrifices for the client organisation.