Towards collaborative development culture in local government organisations

• Pages: 582-599
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-05-2018-0119
• Date: 02 August 2019
• Published date: 02 August 2019
• Author: Sanna Tuurnas,Jari Stenvall,Petri Juhani Virtanen,Elias Pekkola,Kaisa Kurkela
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management

Towards collaborative

development culture in local

government organisations

Sanna Tuurnas

Public Governance Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium and

Institute for Advanced Social Research, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

Jari Stenvall

University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

Petri Juhani Virtanen

Department of Public Sector Leadership, Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra,

Helsinki, Finland, and

Elias Pekkola and Kaisa Kurkela

Faculty of Management and Business, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

Abstract

Purpose –This paper approaches collaborative governance reform as an empirical phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insights about the systemic and grassroots level conditions for

collaboration, observed from the viewpoint of organisational culture. In this paper, the authors ask what

constitutes collaborative development culture in local government organisations?

Design/methodology/approach –The research design is founded on secondary use of quantitative data; a

survey targeted to Finnish local government organisations (n¼172). The authors analyse what factors the

different groups, managers, professionals and politicians consider important for collaborative development

culture and how they assess their local government organisations in this regard.

Findings –According to the results, enabling and supporting management, local government personnel’s

input and ability to seek external partners are essential for creating a collaborative development culture.

Interestingly, despite the recognition of deterring factors by the respondents the results highlight that the

supporting and driving factors are more important for creation of collaborative culture, giving an optimistic

message to actors trying to enhance collaborative development culture in local government organisations.

Originality/value –The authors examine the collaborative governance reform in a critical way, from the

viewpoint of organisational culture. Through the study, it is possible to better understand the reality and

readiness for collaboration of local governments in this respect. This is a valuable aspect for increasing both

theoretical and practical understanding of the so-called collaborative governance.

Keywords Open systems, Organizational culture, Innovation local government, Collaborative culture,

Collaborative governance, New public governance

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Local governments across western societies have faced pressure to transform their

administrative procedures and practices (Newman, 2001). The current trends in public

management, conceptualised as “collaborative governance”or new public governance, highlight

partnerships and networks between service users, the third sector and private and public

organisations. The focus of the reform is on inter-organisational networks and entails a quest for

openness in public sector organisations (e.g. Greve, 2015; Osborne, 2010; Verschuere et al., 2012).

This shift in public sector reform has prompted researchers across Europe to report their

empirical observations related to different collaborative arrangements on the local level,

emphasising the different success stories and obstacles to collaboration (e.g. Dickinson and

Glasby, 2010; Sørensen and Torfing, 2012; Tuurnas, 2015). The research findings suggest

that collaboration has substantial potential but is also difficult in terms of accountability,

International Journal of Public

Sector Management

Vol. 32 No. 6, 2019

pp. 582-599

© Emerald PublishingLimited

0951-3558

DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-05-2018-0119

Received 17 May 2018

Revised 31 May 2018

11 November 2018

10 January 2019

Accepted 10 February 2019

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/0951-3558.htm

582

IJPSM

32,6

representativeness and different institutional logics and goals. The findings also highlight

new skills required for collaboration. This change touches all levels of local government

organisations, from street-level workers to politicians to managers.

The paper argues that collaborative governance is still quite underdeveloped in practice.

The concept offers more visions than it does “hard”empirical evidence of the so-called third

wave of public management reform. Therefore, quoting Osborne (2010, p. 413), collaborative

governance is considered here as a “conceptual model”with which it is possible to analyse

and identify the key challenges in public sector management in the 2010s (Osborne, 2010;

see also Torfing and Triantafillou, 2013).

This is the point of departure for the article. Attention is drawn to collaborative governance

from the viewpoint of organisational culture. It is considered essential to understand the quest

for collaboration as an issue that requires cultural transformation throughout public sector

organisations (see Tuurnas, 2016; Virtanen and Kaivo-oja, 2015). Therefore, viewing so-called

collaborative governance reform as an empirical rather than an ideological phenomenon, more

insights can be gained about the grassroots-level organisational conditions for collaboration in

order to understand the “status quo”of this “third wave of governance”.

In the study, focus is placed particularly on the aspect of organisational culture that

ideally promotes openness, stakeholder collaboration, citizen/client co-creation and

development-driven management and leadership in its development activities. This is

conceptualised as the “collaborative development culture”of local governments.

Specifically, the research task was to study what constitutes collaborative development

culture in local government organisations.

Conceptually, “collaborative development culture”has similarities with “innovation-supportive

culture”(cf. Khazanchi et al., 2007), “innovation-oriented culture”(Wynen et al., 2014) or

“innovation-driven culture”(Kim and Gyonsoo, 2015); but in the paper, these conceptualisations

aredismissed.Thisisbecausethefocusisonthebroader idea of development as an element of

both planned and mundane organisational activity. It is also emphasised that collaboration is not

endogenously an element of innovation-supportive/-oriented/driven cultures: in some situations,

collaboration is not the best way to create an innovation. That said, in this paper, prior literature

focusing on innovation cultures and innovation is still addressed, as many cues about

collaborative development culture are often included in such texts.

This paper is structured as follows. First, collaborative development culture is outlined

based on two different streams of literature on organisational culture and innovations.

Based on these theories, propositions based on the empirical dimensions of collaborative

culture are formulated. These dimensions include the management of organisational culture,

stakeholders as organisational assets and the systemic environment related to the

administrative culture supporting collaborative development.

These propositions are not called hypotheses but are instead referred to as assumptions.

There are threemain reasons for this choiceof terms. First, there was no cleartheory or model

that could be tested. Second, as the literature incorporates various administrative cultures, it

can only provide a heuristic understanding of the premises of collaborative development

culture. Third, the relevant phenomena are difficult to operationalise. Consequently, the

assumptions can be supported or questioned rather than proven true or false. In the second

part of the paper,the present study’s research dataand method are described, the dimensions

are operationalised and an empiricalanalysis of the results of a surveyconducted as part of a

research project related to experimental culture in Finnish municipalities is discussed.

In the third part of the paper, the study’s assumptions and the literature on which they

are based are reviewed, and contributions to scholarly discussions on organisational culture

and collaborative governance are provided by offering an empirical understanding of the

constituents of collaborative development culture in local government organisations. Thus,

the results also have practical value for local government managers and politicians.

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development

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