When municipalities lead coproduction: Lessons from a Danish case study Anne Tortzen Abstract This article explores the role played by municipalities as key leaders in co-production processes initiated by local governments. The aim is to produce new insights into the challenges faced by public agencies leading co-production processes in practice. Drawing on an analytical framework derived from research in governance and leadership, the paper analyses a critical case of co-production in the Danish Municipality of Holbæk. The main focus is on exploring how leadership interventions are enacted by civil servants and politicians, and how these shape the co-production process. The analysis points to the significant role played by municipalities as hands-off leaders of co-production processes, and identifies leadership dynamics which merit further exploration. Introduction Like in many other European countries (OECD, 2011), citizen participation and coproduction are currently high on the strategic agenda of Danish municipalities. Currently, a range of initiatives are being launched in Danish municipalities which aim to engage local communities and civil society in developing, designing and producing welfare services. These initiatives are often initiated by municipalities in the hope of achieving alternative bottom lines, e.g. effectiveness, democratization/empowerment and welfare innovation. Research shows that high expectations abound concerning the potential benefits of co-production (Mayer, Edelenbos, & Monnikhof, 2005; Voorberg, Bekkers, & Tummers, 2013). Some primarily decision makers stress the potential of co-production to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the public sector (Barker, 2010; Durose, Mangan, Needham, Rees, & Hilton, 2013). Others note that co-production may potentially strengthen citizen participation, enhance public service innovation and create public value (Bovaird & Loeffler, 2012; Pestoff, Brandsen, & Verschuere, 2012; Pestoff, 2009). However, these high expectations are not always fulfilled and research into the effects of co-production remains inconclusive (Bovaird & Löffler, 2012; Löffler, 2009; Voorberg et al., 2013a). My main claim is that the type of leadership role assumed by municipalities is a central factor in defining the outcome of co-production processes. This paper sets out to explore the leadership dimension of co-production processes, an aspect that has seldom been studied. The majority of research in the field of coproduction has focused primarily on three areas (Verschuere, Brandsen, & Pestoff, 2012): the motives for co-production, the organizational perequisites for effective coproduction, and the impact of co-production. Not much attention has been given to the leadership perspective in terms of the way these processes are governed, designed and facilitated. 292
Theorizing co-production leadership I argue that a deeper understanding of the dynamics of co-production can be gained from analyzing the leadership dimension of these processes. That is because, in my view, governance must be taken into account when studying co-production initiatives, more specifically in this case the New Public Governance (NPG) (Osborne, 2010). The NPG has fundamentally changed the way that the state governs, moving it away from direct forms of control and towards governing through collaboration with a wide range of actors outside the state (Rhodes, 1996). The NPG is seen here both as a product of, and a response to, the increasingly complex, plural and fragmented nature of public policy implementation and service delivery in the twenty-first century (Osborne, 2010). According to Osborne, the NPG posits both a plural state, where multiple interdependent actors contribute to the delivery of public service, and a pluralist state, where multiple processes inform the policy-making system (Osborne, 2010, p. 9). Central to this is the notion that the state no longer monopolizes societal governance in the way it used to do, but must rely upon, and cooperate with, other actors, organizations and powers in order to get things done (Torfing, 2006, p. 4). This development challenges managers in public organizations and underlines the need for leadership interventions that facilitate collaboration and cooperative problem solving (Ansell & Gash, 2012; Van Wart, 2013). In line with Pestoff et al. (2012, p. xvii), I understand co-production as a core element in new public governance. Examining coproduction processes through an NPG lens directs attention to the leadership challenges that are inherent in co-production processes. In line with other types of governance (Torfing & Peters, 2012), co-production processes challenge power relations and make new roles available to the actors involved (Bovaird, 2007; Boyle, Coote, Sherwood, & Slay, 2010; Durose, Justice, & Skelcher, 2013; Löffler, 2009). For instance, Bovaird (2007, p. 856) points to the fact that: Coproduction almost always means a redistribution of power among stakeholders. The very process of moving to greater coproduction is necessarily highly political and calls into question the balance of representative democracy, participative democracy and professional expertise. In this transition, leadership is of great importance. Current research underlines the central role of leadership in supporting interaction in governance processes involving a wide range of different actors. Several theoretical perspectives have been developed with a view to investigating the types of leadership intervention that are needed to support actors in managing this new interdependence, building trust, reframing the issues at stake, and ultimately taking on new roles in the endeavor to solve common problems (Ansell & Gash, 2007; de Jongh, 2013; Keast & Mandell, 2014; Klijn, Steijn, & Edelenbos, 2010; Koppenjan & Klijn, 2004). In analyzing leadership interventions in the Danish municipality of Holbæk, I will draw on elements from three of these theoretical perspectives. In principle, leadership interventions can be enacted by a range of different actors. However, I focus here on leadership interventions enacted by public agencies, specifically municipalities. Empirically, public agencies tend to dominate in collaborative governance processes (Agranoff, 2006). Researchers reviewing a broad range of international empirical co-production initiatives (Voorberg et al., 2013a) point to the fact that public agencies often assume the role of initiator. The same is shown to be the case in a range of Danish collaborative innovation projects (Aagaard, Sørensen, & Torfing, 2014). It therefore seems highly relevant to explore leadership interventions where a municipality acts as key leader (Ansell & Gash, 2012) in co-production processes. Accordingly, this article aims to answer the following question: 293
How does the municipality enact its leadership role in co-production processes? Leadership is defined in several different ways in this field. In line with Hartley & Bennington (2011, p. 12), I draw here on Stogdill s classic definition of leadership: Leadership may be considered as the process (act) of influencing the activities of an organizational group in its efforts towards goal setting and goal achievement. Following Hartley & Bennington, I extend this understanding of leadership beyond organizational groups to encompass leadership of inter-organizational groups and networks; and beyond goal-setting and achievement to also cover impacts and outcomes.thus, leadership interventions will be defined as: Interventions by a municipality that are intended to influence the activities of the actors involved in co-production processes. The article is divided into four main sections. The first section outlines a theoretical framework for analyzing public leadership interventions in co-production processes. I then briefly present my empirical case which addresses co-production in the Danish Municipality of Holbæk. The third section analyses how the leadership interventions of the municipality played out in practice. In the final paragraph, I discuss the findings and draw conclusions from the analysis. A framework for analyzing leadership of co-production Co-production the concept and its roots In this section, I take a closer look at the concept of co-production. The concept of coproduction is currently high on the agenda of public decision makers in many Western European countries and has also, in recent years, been given increasing attention by the research community. In a systematic review, Voorberg et al. present the following definition of co-production: the active involvement of citizens in public service delivery by creating sustainable partnerships with citizens (Voorberg et al., 2013, p. 2-3). Although definitions of co-production vary, the following elements recur in most research in this field (Löffler, 2009; Voorberg, Bekkers, & Tummers, 2013b, p. 15 ff): Active involvement of citizens in public service delivery Sharing of resources, particularly in relation to the co-production of knowledge Creation of public value and reconstitution of the relationship between government and citizens in order to achieve a more horizontal partnership This is the understanding of co-production that will be applied in this article. In particular, I emphasize the following three elements as central features of co-production processes: 1. Collaboration between public agencies and citizens. 2. The sharing and coproduction of knowledge and 3. The reconstitution of roles and relationships. This understanding of co-production differs from the original definition of coproduction developed by Orstrom et al. in the 1980s (Parks et al., 1981), which was based on an economic understanding of coproduction and was exclusively focused on collaboration between public employees and the users of welfare services on the output side. My approach is more in line with recent research in the field of co-production which focuses on the democratic potential and possible pitfalls of co-production processes (Bovaird, 2007; Durose, Justice, et al., 2013; Jetté & Vaillancourt, 2010; Pestoff et al., 2012; Pestoff, 2009). In line with Pestoff et al. (Jetté & Vaillancourt, 2010; Pestoff et al., 2012), I deploy a broad definition of coproduction which covers individual citizens/ service users as well as civil organizations and local communities, and addresses the output as well as the input side of the policy process. I further draw on the multilevel understanding of co-production developed by Pestoff et al. (2012, p. 17), which distinguishes between co-governance, co-management and coproduction. 294
Another stream of research in the field of co-production is inspired by the notion of cocreation that emerged from the private sector. This is underpinned by a service-dominant logic that points to co-production as an unrecognized factor in public service production (Prahalad, C.K. & Ramaswamy, 2002; Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2007). It emphasizes that co-production is an essential and inalienable core component of service delivery (Osborne, Radnor, & Nasi, 2012; Osborne & Strokosch, 2013, p. 36). I will not be drawing on this approach, as I am mainly interested in co-production initiatives that are actively initiated by public agencies as a public governance strategy. In other words, I will be looking at co-production through a public governance lens. Leading co-production In recent years, a range of new theoretical perspectives on governance and leadership have arisen in line with the NPG paradigm described above, which define the task of leadership in terms of supporting selfgoverning systems across organizations, and explore the types of leadership and governance needed in the new governance context. Alongside this, new understandings of leadership have emerged which raise a number of questions about traditional definitions (Morse & Buss, 2007; Raffel, Leisink, & Middlebrooks, 2009; Van Wart, 2013). Leadership is increasingly seen more as a process than as a person, as enacted not only within but also between organizations, and as an activity that should create public value. Recent empirical developments in the public sector, notably the challenges posed by governance processes, have been addressed both by theories of governance and theories of public leadership (Greve, 2001). These two theoretical approaches operate on different levels and target different objects of investigation (Sørensen & Triantafillou, 2009). The leadership perspective is a micro level perspective that focuses on the acts of individual leaders and how they influence the actions of other actors. Conversely, theories of governance operate at a meso-level, exploring how governance is enacted through the design and framing of interactions, and focusing on the institutionalization of relations among the involved actors. To understand how leadership works in coproduction processes, I will be drawing on theoretical perspectives both from the meso level (governance) and the micro level (leadership). I posit that leadership interventions in coproduction processes consist both of a contextual and a facilitative dimension. Huxham and Vangen (2000, pp. 1168 69) define contextual leadership in collaborative settings by pointing to three leadership media : structure, processes and participants. They argue that these three media are to a large extent, normally outside the control of the members of a collaboration. These media may therefore be thought of as providing contextual leadership. With a view to analyzing leadership interventions I have selected three theoretical perspectives on leadership/governance that enable analysis of both dimensions of leadership, that is: the contextual leadership dimension, which in practice is often enacted by policy-makers and top civil servants; and the facilitative leadership dimension of co-production processes which in practice is often taken care of by selected civil servants who are assigned the task of facilitating collaboration processes. The analytical framework An analytical framework is needed that enables an exploration of how leadership interventions are enacted by public bodies in empirical co-production processes. In the following, I present a framework derived from key concepts borrowed from three prominent theoretical perspectives on governance and leadership. The three perspectives are: The meta-governance perspective, developed by Sørensen & Torfing (2005, 2009), among others, which views leadership as the governance of 295
governance (Torfing & Peters, 2012). In the meta-governance perspective, the main focus is on the contextual dimension of leadership. Leadership is understood as the governance of governance, as it involves deliberate attempts to facilitate, manage and direct more or less self-regulating processes of interactive governance without reverting to traditional statist styles of government in terms of bureaucratic rulemaking and imperative command (Torfing, Jacob, B. Guy Peters, 2012, p. 34). This perspective distinguishes between two different types of metagovernance, namely hands-off- and handson meta-governance. Hands-off governance unfolds at a distance through leadership interventions typically performed by politicians and/or top civil servants, and is aimed at influencing the scope, character, composition and institutional procedures of the network in question. Hands-off leadership is enacted through designing networks (inclusion/ exclusion of participants and formulation of objectives, procedures and deadlines) and framing them, i.e. deciding on conditions such as the political goal/ mandate, political framing and discursive storyline. Conversely, hands-on metagovernance is enacted through direct intervention in the network through management and participation initiatives designed to ensure open and responsive deliberation. My analytical framework includes the following types of leadership intervention, which are derived from the meta-governance perspective: inclusion/ exclusion of participants, setting goals/ frameworks for the co-production process, storytelling and the role of politicians/ linking of democratic arenas. The network management perspective developed by Klijn et al. (Klijn, 1996; Koppenjan & Klijn, 2004), among others, which is primarily preoccupied with finding ways to organize and manage governance networks so that they work effectively. Governance networks are defined by Klijn et al. (2010, p. 1064) in terms of: public policy making and implementation through a web of relationships between government, business and civil society actors. These networks emerge in response to the increasing complexity and uncertainty that arises when societal problems and challenges exceed the boundaries of single organizations and require cooperation across actors and organizations. From this perspective, the main leadership task in networks is to manage insecurity and enhance mutual learning processes among the network actors through a range of leadership interventions, including both hands-on and hands-off interventions (Klijn & Edelenbos, 2007). In my analytical framework, I deploy the following types of leadership intervention derived from this perspective: building trust and relationships and developing a capacity for mutual learning and coproduction of knowledge. The organizational perspective: Leading across organizations. This perspective, put forward by Huxham & Vangen (Huxham & Vangen, 2005; Vangen & Huxham, 2014), among others, focuses primarily on the facilitative dimension of leadership interventions. It takes its point of departure in the breakdown of traditional boundaries between organizations, and consequently identifies a need to take leadership across organizational boundaries. In this perspective (Huxham, 2000), leadership is about ensuring the efficiency of collaborative processes by minimizing collaborative inertia in collaborations. The central leadership task is to cope with complexity and to manage diversity among the participants. This integrative approach emphasizes the importance of sensegiving leadership (Crosby & Bryson, 2005, 2010; Ospina & Foldy, 2010; Page, 2010). This includes bringing about cognitive shifts in the collaborating actors mental images through framing and reframing tasks/challenges and suggesting possible solutions with a view to achieving a shared understanding among them (Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Innes & Booher, 296
1999; Ospina & Foldy, 2010; Page, 2010). From this perspective, I derive the following types of leadership intervention which are included in my analytical framework: building trust and relationships, working with diversity and sense-giving leadership, i.e. facilitating shared understandings and frames. The three perspectives each offer insights into the challenges of collaborative leadership and recommended leadership interventions. I have selected elements that correspond to the constituting factors of co-production mentioned previously, namely: collaboration between public agencies and citizens, the sharing and co-production of knowledge and the reconstitution of roles and relationships. By merging elements from the three perspectives it becomes possible to cover both the contextual (governance) dimension and the facilitative (leadership) dimension of leadership interventions in co-production processes. Meta-governance is the theoretical approach that most explicitly includes both dimensions. Therefore, the analytical framework builds on the hands-off/hands-on meta-governance conceptualization, distinguishing between leadership interventions aimed at designing and framing collaborations (hands-off), and interventions aimed at facilitating co-production processes (hands-on). The analytical framework is presented in Table 1. The first column describes the two central leadership tasks in co-production processes, i.e. hands-off and hands-on tasks. The second column depicts the expected leadership interventions, and the third column operationalizes the leadership interventions in Table 1: A framework for analyzing co-production leadership Leadership task Leadership intervention Operationalization Hands-off meta-governance: Ensure legitimacy, anchoring and efficiency Inclusion/selection of participants Setting the goals and frames for the co-production process Who is invited? How are participants selected? Who participates? Internal anchoring? What are the objectives and frames of the process? Storytelling Linking democratic arenas and the role of politicians How is the initiative described and articulated internally and externally? How are the links between democratic arenas designed? What role do politicians play? Hands-on meta-governance: Facilitating collaborative processes (avoid collaborative inertia and obtain collaborative advantage ) Building trust and relations Working with diversity Sense-giving leadership: Facilitating shared understandings and frames Building capacity for common problem solving: Support mutual learning and co-production of knowledge How and to what extent are trust and relationships built among the participants? How and to what extent are the different perspectives and interests of the participants taken account of? How are the different frames applied? To what extent does reframing occur? How are mutual learning processes supported? To what extent is knowledge co-produced? 297
the form of questions to be addressed in the empirical study of co-production. Holbæk i Fællesskab a Danish co-production case The purpose of the case study is to gain new insight into the challenges faced by local public agencies leading co-production processes in practice. As mentioned earlier, co-production is high on the strategic agenda of Danish municipalities and a range of initiatives have been launched. The case of Holbæk i Fællesskab ( Together in Holbæk ) is one of three municipal co-production cases that I am investigating in my PhD project. The three cases were selected with a view to representing the three different levels of coproduction (Pestoff, 2012), three different municipal views of the purpose of coproduction, and three different sectors and types of participant. The three cases were selected from among a group of Danish municipalities that seem to be cutting edge in terms of initiating and leading coproduction. The case of Holbæk presented here has been selected as a critical case of a local public agency leading co-production. I consider it a most likely case (Flyvbjerg, 2006; Gerring, 2007), since I expect that it will reveal some challenges in leading coproduction that are likely to also be present in other, less obvious cases. The purpose of studying most likely cases is not to enable empirical generalizations (Flyvbjerg, 2006; Halkier, 2011) but to study emerging phenomena that predominate in the selected case, with a view to developing our understanding. The purpose here is to use the case of Holbæk to explore the dynamics at play in co-production leadership, and to enhance our insight into the leadership challenges facing public agencies in coproduction processes. The Municipality of Holbæk has, for many years, been working to strengthen local democratic institutions and experiment with new ways of involving citizens and stakeholders. The Holbæk i Fællesskab cogovernance initiative is, thus, built on years of experience with citizen involvement and collaboration. I consider it an ambitious case in terms of the time and resources invested on the part of the municipality. Furthermore, the case is well suited to analyzing the leadership dimension of co-production, since it is characterized by complex leadership interventions enacted by three different levels of leadership: Policy makers, directors/top civil servants and selected civil servants who organize and facilitate the process. The context Holbæk i Fællesskab was framed by the Municipality of Holbæk as a co-production initiative with a focus on co-governance, which is usually found on the input side of the policy circle (Pestoff et al., 2012, p. 17). The Municipality of Holbæk is a medium sized municipality comprising two to three main towns and a number of small, rural communities. The municipality has a long tradition of focusing on local democracy and has developed an ambitious model of deliberative local arenas (lokalfora), which have operated for the last eight years. The Holbæk i Fællesskab initiative aims to reenergize democratic involvement by citizens and other stakeholders by creating thematic rather than locally defined temporary democratic arenas. It should be noted that the municipality is currently like the majority of Danish municipalities under considerable economic strain. The budget for 2015 18 stipulates that the municipality must save approximately 80 million DKK. This is the economic backdrop for the Holbæk i Fællesskab initiative. Holbæk i Fællesskab In the summer of 2013, Holbæk City Council launched a new municipal strategy called Holbæk i Fællesskab, with a view to enhancing local democracy. The city council 298
designed a new paradigm of experimenting with new ways of collaborating with citizens, users and private companies about innovation and development (Political agreement: Holbæk i Fællesskab). The vision is to strengthen the role of politicians as policy makers and to find new ways to involve citizens and other stakeholders who are not primarily based in the Holbæk area. The case explored in this paper is a cogovernance process initiated by the Municipality of Holbæk in the spring of 2014 as part of Holbæk i Fællesskab. Four groups labelled change groups (omstillingsgrupper, hereafter referred to as o-groups ), were created by the municipality and began work in the spring and summer of 2014. The idea was to invite all stakeholders to co-produce innovative solutions to specific challenges. I studied one of the four groups, namely the o-group working with learning and wellbeing in kindergartens and schools (children 0 18 years of age), and which consisted of approximately 25 members selected and invited by the municipality, including: Parents, politicians, front line workers and leaders of municipal kindergartens and schools, as well as representatives from a wide range of organizations in the children and youth sector. The co-governance initiative was launched as a new way to involve parents and other stakeholders specifically in the development of the children s sector. In recent years, the city council has re-structured and/or closed down a number of smaller public schools in the rural areas of the Municipality of Holbæk. According to civil servants and parents, this has eroded trust between local citizens and the municipality. Setting up the o-groups was ambitious and costly in terms of resources. A project organization team was established within the municipality, consisting of employees responsible for designing and facilitating the o-group meetings, including data preparation and communication. The o-group held four meetings between March and June 2014. Some of the meetings were attended by an extended group of participants, including all members of the relevant school and kindergarten parent councils. In August 2014, the o-group members were invited to a so-called budgetcamp organized by the city council with a view to presenting the results of their work. The o-group initiative resulted in budget savings for the city council to the tune of six million DKK, as well as recommendations for improving the children and youth sector. Data collection and method I carried out a process study of the o-group entitled Learning and well-being among children and young people. I gathered three different types of data suitable for this kind of study (Bogason & Zølner, 2007): Policy documents, participant observation and in depth interviews with selected participants. I also studied relevant policy documents and observed the work of the group over a period of five months, attending their meetings and conducting a total of 18 in depth interviews with selected participants from the different stakeholder groups. Subsequently, the interview and observation data were turned into thick descriptions and analyzed thematically. Case analysis: Leadership of Holbæk i Fællesskab In the following, I explore and analyze the leadership interventions carried out by the municipality in the Holbæk i Fællesskab case using the analytical framework presented earlier. The aim is to generate new insights into the challenges faced by public agencies leading co-production processes. The municipality as hands-off leader In this case study, the hands-off leadership was enacted primarily by the top civil servants in the Municipality of Holbæk, i.e. the directors and the top administrators of the municipal department of Children and Youth. It should be noted that politicians played a limited role. 299
Selection and inclusion of participants The o-group consisted of approximately 25 participants who were handpicked by the municipality and personally invited to join the group. The mayor of Holbæk led the initiative, signing the invitations and introducing the kick-off meeting and other important meetings. The selection of participants was described by the municipality as based on systems thinking, the logic being to include all groups of actors with an interest in or knowledge about the working theme of the group (notat 19.12.13, p 7). In practice, participants were selected in line with a representative, consultative logic: participants in the stakeholder groups of parents, municipal employees and pupils were selected from among representatives in existing democratic organs in the involved institutions, e.g. parent councils of the schools and kindergartens and other existing consultative organs such as Holbæk Youth City Council and the Council of the Disabled. Furthermore, the municipality initiated outreach activities such as inviting a broader group of school council members to some of the meetings and setting up a task force to visit institutions and gather further input. The civil servants responsible for designing and facilitating the o-groups were aware of the need for diversity in the groups, and expressed a wish to introduce creativity and disturbance in the groups by including alternative participants, e.g. the leader of the local youth theater. To this effect, at the first o-group meeting a meta-discussion was initiated about the composition of the group (notes, 1. meeting). Some participants expressed a wish for greater diversity in the group, but most of their ideas were rejected by the facilitator. In practice, no changes were made to the original core group. Only very few youth representatives or young people attended the meetings. In fact, all in all, the group meetings ended up being dominated by employees and leaders from the municipal agencies. Setting the goals, process design and deadlines The task of formulating the o-group s objectives and procedures remained almost exclusively in the hands of the top civil servants of the Municipality of Holbæk. The political basis for this was laid out in the political agreement on Holbæk i Fællesskab in the summer of 2013, which outlined the politicians intention to initiate an open, innovative processes, where citizens and other stakeholders participate early in the process in collaboration with the city council in defining challenges and developing good solutions to them (Document 19.12.13, p 1). In adocument dated December 2013, top civil servants formulated a clear and detailed hands-off leadership intervention in the o-group process. In the words of Newman et al. (2004), one might say that this policy paper shaped the political opportunity structure by defining the kinds of question put to the stakeholders. This document framed the o-group s work both in terms of its process and content by laying out a description of the background, current challenges and tasks of the group, as well as its objectives, and the role to be played by politicians and civil servants, including a detailed time plan for meetings and a deadline for delivering the output. The description of the process seemed to follow a traditional, linear logic, including a tight time-plan, and paid little attention to the special requirements of collaborative processes or to the phenomenon of collaborative inertia. Deadlines can be important tools in influencing collaborative processes (Barnes, Skelcher, Beirens, & Dalziel, 2008; Newman et al., 2004), as they impose pressure to deliver within a certain time-frame. A number of participants from all stakeholder groups commented on the pressures generated by the time-frame. Through this hands-off leadership intervention, the task of the o-group was framed by the municipality as part of a budget challenge and placed within an austerity discourse. The group s task was to come up with new ideas to save 22 mill DKK in the area of children s institutions and 300
schools over the next years (Document: Omstillingstemaer til Budget 2015 18). Notably, two main competing objectives of the o-groups are mentioned in the policy documents, one aimed at producing a tangible result (output), the other aimed at developing a new type of process and collaboration (outcome). The two different types of objectives are described as follows: Output: To produce a final output consisting of one or more possible scenarios/models for the City Council to be used in the 2015-18 Budget (Document of 19.12.13) Outcome: To create a framework for a constructive collaboration among politicians, citizens, companies and other external stakeholders in establishing economic priorities.. and to strengthen political leadership (Document of 19.12.13, p 1 2) By designing the process and framing the challenges, tasks and objectives of the o-group, the municipality s leadership intervention essentially became controlling and hierarchical, and its objectives were contradictory. Storytelling An important element in the o-group process was the municipality s storytelling. For instance, Holbæk i Fællesskab was depicted as part of an ambitious project to develop local democracy. This story was communicated externally through the municipal website and through press releases, films on You Tube, Facebook postings etc., as well as internally through the municipality intranet. It was the mayor of Holbæk, Søren Kjærsgaard, who presented Holbæk s vision for a new way of acting as a municipality to the o-group participants. One example is his introductory speech at the o-group kickoff meeting: Holbæk i Fællesskab must produce something more than just a better bottom line it will help change the way we work as a municipality...if we can develop new and better solutions together this is about seeing the role of the municipality in a new light, as an agency that solves problems with and for its citizens. We will be activating resources in new ways. This is all about a new way of being a citizen, a way where more people participate and take responsibility (The Mayor, 1. meeting 13.3.2014). The o-groups were described by the Municipality of Holbæk as an example of coproduction, and their work was framed as a collaborative innovation initiative (Document, 19.12.13) that would enable organizational learning, particularly for the politicians who were also participating in the so-called Democratic Experimentarium. The storytelling about the o-groups seems in line with the Municipality of Holbæk s ambition to brand itself as a leading and progressive actor in promoting democracy and coproduction. According to Voorberg et al. (2013a), this use of co-production in a symbolic process to achieve legitimacy is common. The linking of democratic arenas and the role of politicians The four o-groups were framed by the municipality as political and characterized by a consultative process. Policy documents stressed that the role of the o-groups was to deliver one or more possible scenarios/ models to the city council, which the city council can but is not committed to - use in the 2015 18 Budget (Document, 19.12.2013), effectively granting the City Council ultimate decision-making power. Through careful institutional design, the Municipality of Holbæk sought to link the collaborative arena of co-production with the traditional institutional arena of decisionmaking by assigning the politicians the role of linking agents. As mentioned previously, the mayor of Holbæk, Søren Kjærsgaard, played an important role in the process. Also, the chairmen of each of the relevant political committees were assigned the task of heading 301
the o-groups. And finally, all members of the relevant political committees were invited to participate in the o-groups together with 1-2 selected members from the Democratic Experimentarium. The aim was to include between five and seven politicians in each of the o-groups. The role of the politicians and their link to the representative decision-making arena was clearly thought through on paper (Document, December 2013), as were the procedures designed to ensure that the politicians played a proactive role in the o-groups work. But in reality, the politicians role was perceived as unclear, both by the politicians themselves and by the other participants. One indication of this is the fact that less than half of the invited politicians actually attended the o-group meetings. The politicians did not feel confident in this new arena. One of them expressed frustration over the process: What is my mandate actually? (Interview: Politician). This role insecurity among the politicians was also mentioned by the mayor of Holbæk: Some of them (the politicians) seem to cling to their traditional role as politician expressing their own view of things. They put their views forward when suggestions come up. And that inhibits dialogue because then it s the politicians who steer the direction of the o-groups and that wasn t our intention (Interview, mayor). One of the civil servants who was acting as a facilitator reflected on the deeper institutional reasons for the politicians difficult role. She was relatively new to the organization and wondered why the politicians were not assigned a more central role in the process: I feel like involving the politicians more. It is easy to hear from the way the politicians talk about things that they are not really aware what kind of process we are embarking on. They have sort of been written out of the story. (Interview, civil servant, project group). Effectively, the politicians were given the role of linking agents between the two democratic arenas, but were clearly not prepared to take on this role and did not feel at ease with it. As a result of this role insecurity, they either opted out of the process or retreated to their traditional roles, a response that has also been identified in other studies (Agger & Sørensen, 2014). The municipality as hands-on leader The hands-on leadership roles were primarily executed by civil servants from the Municipality of Holbæk, who did the job of designing, preparing and facilitating the o-group meetings. Through participation in the o-groups, heads of schools and kindergartens in the municipality also played a role in the hands-on framing of challenges and solutions. Building trust/relations and working with diversity among participants My observations show that the civil servants worked professionally to try to facilitate and design the meetings in ways that would enable the building of trust and relationships and to a certain extent also allow space for diversity. This was mirrored in the design of procedures to encourage dialogue in the o-group which I studied. The meeting design gave the participants the opportunity to work in small groups across stakeholder affiliations in order to strengthen trust and understanding among them. One example is the third meeting of the o-group, which was mentioned by several participants as a particularly successful meeting. At this meeting, around one hundred participants gathered to discuss possible solutions to problems in the field of children and schools. All members of the parent councils of the involved schools and kindergartens had been invited. The participants were divided into smaller groups and asked to perform a joint SWOT analysis of some proposed solutions. In general, the experience among interviewees was that this form of dialogue in small groups across stakeholders functioned well by making room for all participants to express their views and unfold the nuances of the theme. 302
Generally, however, although a range of different points of view emerged during the o-group meetings and dialogue, there was no system in place to help participants reach any common ground or conclusions. In other words, the Municipality of Holbæk did not actively assume the role of mediator between different interests or points of view. For instance, in the SWOT analysis, the participants pointed to strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities in relation to three possible scenarios put forward by the municipality. But no summary or conclusion was generated, leaving the municipality to singlehandedly interpret the results. The role of the municipality as facilitative leader was characterized by ambiguity: On the one hand, the municipality invested a lot of resources and professionalism in the handson facilitation and design of the process; but on the other hand it maintained a strictly hands-off policy when it came to the framing of the task and objectives. In practice, this left little room for the participants to unfold alternative points of view. Sense-making: Framing and reframing of challenges and possible solutions In terms of framing and re-framing I also observed ambiguity in the municipality s role as facilitator. The hands-on process design invited participants to unfold a range of different frames and understandings of the challenges facing children in schools and kindergartens. But in practice, the austerity framing imposed on the o-groups by the Municipality of Holbæk did not allow for genuine re-framing. The story of Holbæk s schools and kindergartens was framed by the municipality in terms of key economic figures and existing policies in the area of children and youth. The message was basically: Fewer children will be attending schools in the future, particularly in some of the rural districts. And as these schools will not be sustainable in the future, it will be necessary to close down some of the smaller schools and gather the children in larger schools. The concept of sustainability, both economic and professional, was central in the municipal framing of these challenges. From the outset, the o-group s meetings were characterized by the fact that it was the municipality that framed the challenges and tasks. Gradually, over the course of the meetings, this municipal framing became increasingly dominant. In the early phases, the framing only addressed the challenges to be solved by the o-groups. But in the second phase, the municipality also framed possible solutions, e.g. necessary structural changes to schools. A certain awareness of, and skepticism towards, this dominant framing became apparent among the participants. One school-teacher put it this way: I think, well, it is not about the children, it is about the money. And I am stuck between the soft values and the budget.. They could just as well have turned it around (putting the children first), because you cannot always put a price on human beings and soft values. If we don t pay attention to that side of things, it will disappear from view. (Interview, teacher). All in all, the stakeholders seemed prepared to accept the municipality s austerity framing of the challenges, i.e. the need to cut expenditures. However, the municipality s framing of the possible solutions was challenged by the stakeholders. One example arose when parents of children attending smaller schools in the rural areas argued that keeping their local school open would be vital to the sustainability of the rural community, and expressed concern at the possible closing down of schools in the small, rural communities. This attempt to reframe the idea of sustainability, however, was not welcomed by the organizers. On several occasions, managers from the Municipality of Holbæk who participated in the meetings behaved as municipal representatives, defending their preferred frame and seeking to invalidate other stakeholders views. Various stakeholders attempted to challenge the municipality s steering of the framing process along the way. But in general, 303
the municipality did not initiate sense-making processes that would enable a re-framing of the problems and solutions. The facilitation of mutual learning processes and the co-production of knowledge The o-group s meetings were designed and facilitated with a view to supporting mutual learning, e.g. through dialogue across stakeholder groups. But at the same time, the Municipality of Holbæk assumed the role of dominant knowledge provider by continuously communicating information about e.g. demographic developments, future expenses, and impact evaluations that supported the municipality s austerity frame. The municipality also actively marginalized alternative forms of knowledge through hands-on facilitation. In one instance, this occurred when participants from the rural communities highlighted the important role played by the local schools in sustaining children s and young people s active leisure activities. This knowledge was framed by the municipality in terms of illegitimate vested interests. In an interview, one of the managers reflected on this mechanism: We tend to get angry with (those participants) when they do not say the things we want to hear, for instance parents from the small, rural schools. We decide that they have a certain agenda, for instance to preserve their schools and then we do not really listen to their concerns. We very easily put them in a box like: Oh, well, they are opposed to this idea or they are just fighting for a certain agenda (Interview, project manager). At one point (after the second o-group meeting), the municipal top management decided to take the lead in the process. They no longer believed that the o-group would come up with any innovative ideas, and instead they decided to propose three possible (structural) solutions to the austerity challenges in the field of schools and kindergartens. They did this by presenting a body of data. The decision was described as follows by the area director: (at this point in the process).. we think we have to be upfront and disclose the facts. It s time to say it outright: the issue is not whether schools should be closed down. The issue is how many... We must take the data seriously. It is obvious that these schools will die out eventually anyway and only we (at the municipality) have this overview nobody else! (Interview, director). At this point, the municipality chose to put forward three possible solutions to the austerity challenge in the area of schools and kindergartens. These three themes were put forward for the o-group and framed as based on the preliminary work of the o-group, but in fact they were based on calculations made by civil servants before the o-group process had begun: When we made our forecasts which of course we had done in advance to see if there was any chance at all of reaching the 22 million crowns we need we realized that through re-structuring alone - - it would be possible to find 21,5 million without compromising the service level. We already know that, so the whole time we ve been thinking how the hell can we tell them (the o-group) about this and should we tell them? (Interview, director) All in all, the municipality s steering of the framing process and its reluctance to reframe problems and solutions influenced the learning process of all the participants and hindered their ability to co-produce knowledge during the collaboration process. The municipality s knowledge base came to dominate the entire process. A similar conclusion with respect to the co-production of knowledge was reached by Edelenbos et al. in a Dutch context (Edelenbos, van Buuren, & van Schie, 2011). Conclusions The case study described above offers a number of insights into the role played by municipalities as leaders of co-production processes. Acentral insight is the significance of the hands-off leadership exercised by 304
public agencies involved in collaborative processes. Even though the co-production process in Holbæk was framed by the municipality as a collaborative and innovative process, the top municipal civil servants deployed traditional (i.e. hierarchical) leadership interventions in designing and framing the process. The hands-off leadership interventions by top civil servants in the initial phases came to play a significant role in the co-production process as a whole. I interpret this as an example of excessive metagovernance (Sørensen & Torfing 2009, p. 252) which risks straight-jacketing the coproduction process. The case study also points to institutional tensions as an important factor in coproduction processes. The case of Holbæk i Fællesskab can be understood as an attempt to introduce a temporary collaborative arena in a context of hierarchical governance. This can create institutional tensions which then influence hands-on leadership interventions by civil servants. The formulation of two contradictory objectives an output objective to achieve budget cuts and an outcome objective to develop new relations and democratic dialogue introduced an institutional tension into the process. This observation is in line with current research showing that networks operate in a hybrid democracy (Edelenbos, Van Buuren, & Klijn, 2013; Koppenjan & Klijn, 2004; van Meerkerk & Edelenbos, 2013). The findings also correspond to those of e.g. Barnes et al. (2007), who found that new collaborative institutional mechanisms tend to produce institutional tensions and conflicting imperatives for actors (Barnes, Newman, & Sullivan, 2007). In the case of Holbæk, the civil servants in charge of hands-on leadership interventions were clearly enmeshed in such tensions. They experienced institutional pressures to produce tangible results/outputs within a tight timeframe, and responded by reverting to institutionalized logics of action (Barnes et al., 2007), giving priority to the output objective. This pressure was expressed thus by the project leader: It can be challenging in a process. sometimes we laugh a little, because it s important to us to send the signal that we don t have a hidden agenda. But the whole time there is this underlying problem that we have to find the money. And we re pretty much stumped about how we re going to do that (Interview, project manager). The analysis shows that the facilitative hands-on leadership interventions by the municipality were fraught with ambiguity. On the one hand, the municipality invested a lot of resources and professionalism in the design and hands-on facilitation of the process, but on the other they adopted a strict hands-off framing of the task and objectives which, in practice, left little room for diversity, sensemaking leadership or mutual learning processes among the participants. The case study also shows how municipal leadership interventions shape co-production processes. As mentioned earlier, a central pillar in co-production initiatives is their potential for reconstituting relations between public employees and citizens/civil society. In discussing this relationship, researchers (Boyle & Harris, 2010; Durose, Mangan, et al., 2013; Needham &Carr, 2009; OECD, 2011) distinguish between three different levels of co-production: description, recognition and transformation, respectively. Concerning the relationship between citizens and the municipality, the analysis shows that the Holbæk case can be categorized as a case of co-production at the level of recognition. I base this interpretation on several aspects of the municipality s leadership interventions. First, through directive forms of hands-off leadership intervention, the Municipality of Holbæk effectively introduced a logic of consultation into the process, and not a logic of coproduction as the municipality itself claimed. This is apparent from, for instance, the way stakeholders were selected and invited to give their opinions but were not seen as assets or resources in solving the common challenges faced. Also, through its directive leadership, the municipality assumed responsibility for the selection and implementation of solutions, not leaving any room for stakeholders to act constructively or take responsibility. 305