ECCO – Co-creation: Expectations, Challenges and Coping Strategies in Norwegian Local Governments

The aim of this research project is to understand what lies behind the growing interest in co-creation.

​​Budget: Total budget NOK 11,342,000, of which to Nord 2,742,000, of which to partners NOK 4,740,000, of which self-financing 3,860,000
Funder: NRC
Start and finish date: 01.07.2020 - 30.6.2023 
Consortium (Coordinating organisation in bold): Nord University, Oslo Met, Roskilde University, Business School at Oslo Met

Researchers at FSV:

  • ​Asbjørn Røiseland
  • Janne Breimo

Abstract:

The aim of this research project is to understand what lies behind the growing interest in co-creation. The project will look at how and why the notion of co-creation emerges in national policy strategies, how it is translated into and between local governance practices, and how its local adoption is accompanied by a particular set of expectations to what co-creation can achieve. The project is particularly interested in how co-creation challenges, and perhaps even clashes with, established forms of local government, and how local public managers aim to cope with challenges, conflicts and dilemmas that emerge when co-creation is introduced in a context characterized by representative democracy, bureaucratic administration and newly added elements of performance management and market governance. The burning question is how a pragmatic use of local coping strategies enable local governments to harvest the merits and mitigate the problems of a new synthesis between existing and emerging forms of governance.