Letting go of Managing? Struggles over Managerial Roles in Collaborative Governance

The purpose of this study is to examine how public managers deal with changing roles in a collaborative governance trial. The primary research question is: How are public managers positioned in relation to governing practices deriving from collaborative governance, and what challenges do they face?

The results suggest that when public managers construct new roles to facilitate collaborative governance, they struggle with a change of roles from "old", hierarchically defined roles to a new role as a facilitator of common processes. According to the author, the managers' movement towards a new role begins by constructing collaborative governance as a solution to existing problems with hierarchical organisation and governance. They thereby produce a need to replace the old governance role with the facilitator role. The managers then struggle to handle their new role and the frustrations of having to govern uncontrollable social dynamics between various stakeholders. However, the analysis indicates that, through these challenges, the managers succeed in creating new options for themselves based on their power to facilitate common processes. Still, the study shows that the managers not only have to change from one role to another, they also have to struggle with simultaneous, contradicting roles. In this sense, the challenges of collaborative governance not only involve a change to a new role, but they also involve positioning oneself between several roles simultaneously.

The analysis is based on ethnographic data from a trial with new methods of quality assurance within the daycare area. The trial took place in two municipalities from 2010 to 2014. The trial comprised practices inspired by collaborative governance, in which various stakeholders, including public managers, politicians, daycare leaders, daycare teachers, children and parents were involved to develop work on daycare quality. As part of the trial, the two municipalities experimented with alternative methods of quality management, including workshops and daycare market places. Cross-cutting dialogue between various stakeholders took place in the market place, and the daycare centres presented their pedagogical work.

The data material includes field notes, photographs, video and sound recordings from participant observations, interviews with public managers, daycare leaders and daycare teachers (individually and in groups) as well as various organisational documents such as reflection notes, email correspondence, etc.

Plotnikof, M. (2016). Letting go of Managing? Struggles over Managerial Roles in Collaborative Governance. Nordic journal of working life studies 6(S1), 109-128.

Hvid & Plotnikof (2012): "Nye Muligheder for Samarbejde i Styring og Organisering af Dagtilbud". Endvidere skal nærværende studie kobles til et andet studie af samme forfatter, som indgår i dette års kortlægning: Changing Market-Values? Tensions of Contradicting Public Management Discourses - A Case From the Danish Daycare Sector.