Stakeholders’ learning and transformative action when developing a collaboration platform to provide welfare services

ABSTRACT

This article investigates stakeholders’ learning and transformative action when developing a collaboration platform between a Swedish regional authority organisation (RAO) and civil society organisations (CSOs) to find new ways to provide welfare services. The material is based on 22 semi-structured interviews and observations of seven general meetings at which RAO officials and CSO representatives met. In addition, notes were taken during two workshops with key stakeholders and interviewees, respectively. Learning and transformative action were analysed through a TADS approach. The findings reveal that a signed agreement, stipulating collaboration between the two sectors (public and civil society) became a second stimulus for shared transformative agency. After signing the agreement, conflicts of motives arose, which challenged learning between stakeholders. Surprisingly, it was not the conflicts of motives between the two sectors, but those within each sector that constituted the most severe expansive learning challenges, and consequently also a delay in the development of the collaboration platform that was to provide welfare services. Nonetheless, the conflicts also contributed to small, incremental, steps of transformative action toward what they had set out to do.

KEYWORDS:

• Transformative action
• double stimulation
• expansive learning
• coalition
• civil society

Introduction

In response to an increasing need to address complex societal changes, various forms of collaboration have been developed to provide welfare services (Duru, Trenz, and Sejersen 2021). Some of these emerging collaborative forms require a strong involvement of two or all three sectors – the private and public sectors, and civil society (Tillmar 2012). In this article we report on a collaborative form between the public sector and civil society that has been framed as a local participatory initiative to develop a collaboration platform for the provision of welfare services by creating a coalition of stakeholders from a Swedish regional authority (RA) and about 40 civil society organisations (CSOs). Regional authorities in Sweden provide healthcare and other welfare services for their citizens, and they govern and manage regional development and public transportation. Civil society (CS) can be seen as a complement to the public sector’s responsibilities to provide welfare services to citizens. Nevertheless, the Swedish welfare system has its roots in civil society, and in many countries idea-driven organisations have continued to play a significant role in welfare provision. Civil society organisations often seek arenas for collaboration with the public sector to launch joint activities, collaborate on funding or help to develop welfare services. It is argued that despite – or because of – the differences between the sectors, all parties can gain economic and social benefits through collaboration (Weber et al. 2022). Different sector logics make this collaboration complex, which implies that potential benefits can be confronted by tensions and opposing forces embedded in cross-sector collaborations (Weber et al. 2022). The diametrically opposed sector logics, from which the public sector and civil society operate, can lead to conflicts between the parties involved (Tillmar 2012). Tillmar (2012) adds that different logics and most common conflicts can, in part, be studied by examining how collaboration between the sectors is organised and the conditions inherent in the cross-sector collaboration.

To analyse collaborations between the studied regional authority organisation (RAO) and the civil society organisations (CSOs), we use the approach of transformative action through double stimulation (TADS) and the closely connected concept of expansive learning (Engeström and Sannino 2021). As we will argue, there are several steps towards transforming welfare services through the mentioned collaboration, and this will involve expansive learning in many workplaces, within various departments and organisations. We view these workplaces as activity systems (Engeström 2001) with independent subjects, instruments, rules, communities and division of labour, but with an emerging common object: developing a collaboration platform for the provision of welfare services. Our argument is in line with Engeström, Nuttall, and Hopwood (2020, 1), whereby learning challenges emerge when collaborating stakeholders face conflicts and thus need to construct artefacts to find solutions, and where these solutions are not necessarily obvious or ‘correct’.

The article’s purpose is to investigate stakeholders’ learning and transformative action when developing a collaboration platform between a Swedish regional authority organisation (RAO) and civil society organisations (CSOs) to find new ways to provide welfare services. The research questions are:

1. How is the collaboration organised within and between the RAO and the CSOs?

2. What challenged the collaborating stakeholders’ learning and transformative action when developing the collaboration platform?

The article is divided into the following sections. The following section outlines the TADS approach, which has been used as an analytical lens (Engeström and Sannino 2021). Thereafter, the research context and the method are described. In the next section, the findings are presented and discussed. Finally, the research questions are answered.

Theoretical framework

This section describes the TADS approach, which has been used as a theoretical framework to analyse transformative action (Engeström and Sannino 2021) and expansive learning (Engeström 2001).

Conflicts of motives may hinder or promote expansive learning

Conflicts of motives may hinder learning and thus also transformative action, but there is also an upside, which is that such conflicts may be an impetus for expansive learning, resulting in new, innovative ways of working (Engeström 2001), including in heterogenous constellations (Engeström and Sannino 2021). Expansive learning means learning ‘something that is not yet there’ (Engeström and Sannino 2010, 2), and the expansive learning process has been described as ‘the construction of new forms of collaborative practice through the resolution of contradictions that the activity system faces’ (Dochy et al. 2021, 218). This means that expansive learning refers to learn from the often unexpected where people learn something new together when no one knows exactly what needs to be learned (Engeström 2001). The process is often portrayed as a circle of various action points: a leaning cycle that starts with questioning the current situation or way of working, resulting in an analysis and the modelling of a new solution (Engeström 2001). The model is then tested, evaluated and reflected upon before being implemented, and the new solution is finally consolidated with other ways of working. In between the various steps, the process goes back and forth. This means that the step between testing a model and implementing it is filled with adjustments or improvements, and the step of reflection is often based on whatever resistance there may be to what had been implemented before it could be stabilised.

In complex heterogeneous coalitions such as the studied one, it is difficult – if not impossible – to include representatives from all activity systems involved in the same imagined expansive learning cycle, because they do not start at the same time or evolve simultaneously. This implies that some learning potential can be lost unless the interdependent but parallel learning cycles are intentionally supported (Sannino 2015; 2020a; Sannino and Engeström 2018) by conditions that are necessary for expansive learning and transformative action. Further, conflicts of motives may occur throughout the expansive learning cycles, and it has been suggested that they may be overcome by creating transformative agency through double stimulation, which is both a method and a theory (Sannino 2015).

Transformative action through double stimulation in heterogeneous coalitions

Double stimulation is used as a theory for understanding how transformative agency within heterogenous coalitions in society can be enhanced (Sannino 2015; Sannino and Engeström 2018; Engeström and Sannino 2021). The concept of double stimulation stems from experiments performed by Vygotsky (1931 [1994]) in which he showed that a person can break out of a problematic situation in which internal conflicting motives emerge by using a second stimulus. The second stimulus is intentionally decided on in advance and it constitutes a way to get out of a stale situation. Sannino and Laitinen (2015) found that before a person decides on a second stimulus, there is a trail of thoughts and inner conflicting motives about different possibilities to get out of the situation, indicating that decision-making is a process of learning.

When collaborating organisations work towards a common object, following the first stimulus that set the collaboration in motion, they may – similarly to individuals – deactivate conflicts of motives; that is, if there is a split between collaborating partners on which route to take, they can develop a second stimulus (Engeström and Sannino 2021). They do so by identifying or developing a tool or an artefact that will function as a second stimulus that provides a way to get out of the stale situation (Sannino 2020a), but only if the learners first adopt the artefacts, which would depend on the learners’ volitional action and agency (Sannino 2015). A shared transformative agency can be built by taking control of the situation and collaboratively break away from the given frame of action (Virkkunen 2006), and – through joint efforts – also transforming multiple activity systems (Engeström, Nuttall, and Hopwood 2020). Developing and using shared artefacts or tools can encourage collaborating partners to redefine the situation and master their frame of action. Therefore, artefacts or tools function as a second stimulus that can strengthen the collaborating partners’ capacity for learning and transformative action (Sannino 2020a; Engeström and Sannino 2021). The second stimulus may even function as a (more) stable base than the previous one (Morselli and Sannino 2021). Further, the discussion that arises when developing the artefact can be seen as a decision-making process (Sannino 2020a). Figure 1 illustrates transformative action through double stimulation (TADS).

Figure 1. A process in which transformative action is developed through double stimulation (developed after Sannino’s model 2020a, 169).

Figure 1 illustrates the double stimulation process, which includes two phases: the decision-making phase and the phase in which a second stimulus is implemented. As shown in Figure 1, a conflict of motives may flare up again and another second stimulus may be needed to get out of the problematic situation. Each time the collaborating partners go through the process of deciding on a second stimulus, their transformative action is strengthened, as shown by the ropes becoming thicker and stronger every time the collaborating partners implement a second stimulus (Sannino 2020a). A strong rope works better than a weak one for pulling partners in the same direction towards a common object. Thus, a second stimulus that is accepted by partners in a coalition provides a volitional path to action; a path based on free will, as opposed to something forced upon them (Sannino 2015). This is important, because every time a problematic situation with conflicts of motives occurs, it may confuse the transformation process (Sannino 2020b). Thus, double stimulation is a mechanism that builds transformative agency and will along an expansive learning process (Engeström 2001), and can help to manage unexpected situations (Villemain and Lémonie 2022).

Research context

The research context constitutes a collaborative coalition between a Swedish regional authority organisation (RAO) and civil society organisations (CSOs). In Sweden, an RAO is politically governed (with elections every four years). Its main responsibilities are healthcare, regional development and public transportation. RAOs have their own taxation rights and are relatively independent of the national state government. They are also independent of municipalities, which are local authorities. The RAO and 41 individual CSOs signed an ‘Agreement’, initially for collaboration between Region XX and the civil society sector in Region XX. The CSOs included patient organisations, leisure associations, sports clubs, churches, study associations, senior citizens’ associations and help organisations. Two criteria for being able to sign was that the CSO worked on a regional level and had at least two local subsidiaries. The Agreement consists of seven principles¹ for collaboration and four purposes.

The study focuses one of the purposes of the Agreement, which was ‘to find solutions to societal challenges’, which implicitly meant collaborating to find new ways to provide welfare services. Other purposes included increasing the dialogue between CSOs and the RAO, facilitating collaboration that strengthens democracy and increases CSOs’ participation and inclusion, and increasing knowledge about the parties involved in order to build trust between them.

Method

This study uses an interactive research approach (Aagaard Nielsen and Svensson 2006), in that the research focus was chiselled out together with key individuals within the coalition. The coalition was followed by the researchers responsible for this paper over the course of 21 months, and data was collected via two sets of interviews with a total of 22 individuals and observations of seven meetings between the collaborating stakeholders from the RAO and the CSOs. Documents describing how the coalition was formed were consequently also studied. In addition, after both sets of interviews, workshops were organised by the researchers in order to jointly interpret and discuss preliminary research findings. However, the researchers had no role in organising the coalition or driving any change processes related to it.

Selection of participants

The three key individuals who had contributed to forming the research focus also had knowledge about the various CSOs and departments within the RAO. They were asked to identify and suggest well-informed politicians and officials from the RAO and representatives from the CSOs. The criteria, set by the researchers (authors), were that both central and peripheral members of the coalition were to be invited, including both those who expressed enthusiasm and those who were more reserved. Further, representatives from both small and large CSOs were to be selected, as well as representatives from departments for different operations within the RAO. The researchers made the final selection resulting in a total of 22 chosen interviewees, including the three mentioned key individuals.

Data collection

Eleven of the interviews were conducted face-to-face and eleven were phone interviews, according to the interviewees’ preferences. Two, in part, similar semi-structured interview guides, were used in two sets of interviews. Table 1 contains an overview of the data collection in the form of interviews and the interview guide themes.

Table 1. Data collection in two sets of interviews, themes in interview guides and examples of questions.

Interview set 1 (left side) and 2 (right side)
From the CSO: Employed process leader (n = 1) Participants (n = 4) From the RAO: Strategic development leaders (n = 2)	From the CSO: Participants (n = 8) From the RAO: Officials (n = 5) Politicians (n = 2)
Themes in interview guide and examples of questions in short
Background questions (organisation and role in it? Previous experience of collaboration?) The process leading up to the agreement (Why an agreement and who initiated the idea? What is your role in connection to the agreement? Did you take on your role yourself or was it given to you? Is it an easy or difficult one?) The work ahead (what are the goals? What conditions need to be created for you to reach the goals? Who drives the work and who makes decisions? What are the pros and cons of it being governed by the regional development department? What needs are to be met, in the RAO and in the CSOs?) The content of collaborative activities (What activities do you think is most important to increase the partners’ competencies?) Organisation of the collaborative platform (How would you like to see the future work organised between the two sectors and in your own organisation?) Challenges in collaborating in line with the shared agreement? (What are the main challenges right now and in the future?)	Background questions (organisation and role in it? Previous experience of collaboration?) The coalitions’ organisation and its objectives (Can you please elaborate on the collaboration between the partners? In what ways does the collaboration affect your own department or organisation? What are the long – and short-term goals? Is this type of collaboration easy or difficult, why?) The partners’ need for collaboration (What needs are to be met, in the RAO and in the CSOs? What do you expect the collaboration will lead to, for you and your organisation?) Results and effects (Now when the principles and an action plan is in place, how has the collaboration effected your organisation? Is there new concrete collaboration between your and another organisation?) Challenges collaborating in line with the shared Agreement (What factors enable the collaboration between the RAO and the CSOs and what factors are restraining? In what way is your organisation involved in the collaboration, and how do you contribute? What is necessary for your organisation to keep up an interest for the collaboration?) Brokers’ roles and ownership of the collaboration process (who are the key individuals in the collaboration? What position or personal competencies do they have? So far, has the collaboration mainly been on a strategical level or an operative level? If you were to give advice about the collaboration to decision makers in the RAO and CSOs what would that be and why?)

In parallel to the interviews, one of the authors observed seven general meetings that took place throughout the duration of the study. Approximately 20–30 persons attended each meeting, the majority representing CSOs. The CSO representatives had various roles in their home organisations and some of them were employed while others were not. Examples of roles were managers, project leaders, chairpersons and regular CSO members. Representatives from the RAO were officials from a regional development division and politicians focused on regional development and public health. On some occasions, officials from the healthcare division attended the meetings. Unstructured notes were taken, describing meeting content and the unfolding dialogue between the participants. Each meeting generated three or four typed A4 pages, with a mix of verbatim and summary notes. The observations gave an insight into the content of the general meetings and what was discussed, which was important in order to grasp both content and ongoing processes in the collaborative coalition. In addition, three types of documents were studied. The first was published and unpublished material that detailed the process up until the signing of the Agreement, including processes dating back several years. The second described the RAO, while the third described large CSOs or ongoing alliances between CSOs. This was necessary to get a holistic view of the two sectors.

In addition, notes were taken during two workshops and used as additional data. The first workshop was conducted face-to-face with two of the key individuals. This workshop was important because the researchers’ initial analysis was validated by these key individuals, which resulted in setting out a continued route for the research project. Finally, we arranged a digital workshop to which all the interviewees were invited. Eleven of them took part, including the key stakeholder representatives. The participants interpreted and discussed the presented tentative results, first in small groups unaccompanied by the researchers and then together with the researchers. The notes (four typed A4 pages) detail the latter discussion. The workshop made the researchers’ analysis more robust, as the participants mainly confirmed the researchers’ initial analysis with some minor corrections that improved certain aspects.

Data analysis

The material was processed and analysed continuously. Recordings of the interviews were transcribed verbatim. Notes from meetings, workshops and document readings served as supplementary sources in the qualitative content analysis that followed. In the inductively driven analysis of the first set of interviews, all transcripts and summaries were read several times, and everything said about the organisation of the collaboration or challenges regarding the ongoing collaboration was noted, as well as remarks on the process leading up to the Agreement and thoughts about the coalition’s future work. The initial analysis gave an overview of the Agreement and the process up until it was signed, as well as a rough outline of the collaboration and its current activities, and the main challenges in the ongoing collaborative process.

Initially, the analysis of the second set of interviews followed a similar path. Everything said about collaboration within each sector and between the RAO and CSOs – including the organisation of the collaboration platform, the collaboration objective and any mentioned challenges in the collaboration – was noted, along with conditions that were expressed as enablers of the collaboration. Comments about what the stakeholders thought the collaboration could do for them were also noted, as well as any early results or effects, and whom the interviewees considered to be key stakeholder representatives.

In a final analysis step, the two sets of interview data were combined and notes from both workshops were included. Excerpt from the interviews and workshop notes were categorised as (a) organising the collaboration within and between the two sectors (public sector and civil society), and (b) challenges while developing the collaboration platform. This empirically driven analysis provided us with a sequence of activities, tools, events and challenges, describing what happened during the different development phases while the collaboration platform was being formed. This part of the analysis was also guided by the TADS approach (Sannino 2015; Sannino and Engeström 2018; Engeström and Sannino 2021), focusing on identifying the first stimuli (complex problem related to welfare services) and second stimuli (the Agreement), expansive learning and transformative actions.

Findings and discussion

The findings reveal organisation of the collaboration between RAO and CSOs and challenges regarding stakeholders’ learning and transformative action from the initial start-up and planning to the implementation of the collaboration platform leading up to the first joint provision of welfare services.

The first stimulus and the subsequent decision-making phase

The first stimulus was that stakeholders in both the public and civil society sectors realised that they shared a complex problem that they did not yet have an obvious solution for. To achieve a ‘solution’ the collaborating stakeholders needed to learn something that was ‘not yet there’ (Engeström and Sannino 2010), which was new ways to provide welfare services that were necessary due to changing conditions. The shared problem was driven by demographic changes such as a growing elderly population and immigration. A conflict of motives for finding new welfare services generally existed at the society level, which filtered down to the local contexts in which CSOs were eligible for funding from the RAO to provide welfare services, and in which CSOs had access to – but could influence – various welfare processes within the RAO. Up until now, collaboration between the stakeholders was not jointly organised and it had not resulted in a collective learning effort to develop knowledge about new ways to provide welfare services, but there were dialogues on existing services provided by the RAO.

To encourage the RAO’s and the CSO’s work towards a joint objective to try to solve the shared problem regarding welfare services, a political initiative was presented to the regional assembly, which resulted in monetary resources being earmarked. The RAO’s regional development division was in charge, and two external process leaders were employed. Their assignment was to start a process that would create shared transformative agency (Virkkunen 2006). One process leader was tasked with bringing as many CSOs onboard as possible during a one-year project, while the other was commissioned to inform and win backing for the political will throughout the RAO, including the healthcare division. This led to a series of transformative actions, which started by redefining the collaboration across departments and entities within and between the RAO and the CSO (cf. Engeström 2001; Sannino 2015; 2020a). The actual idea of developing a more formalised collaboration platform began with the joint decision to formulate an agreement, and the continuing trail of thoughts (Sannino and Laitinen 2015) can be seen as the beginning of an expansive learning cycle (Engeström 2001) as the stakeholders questioned what they would do to change the way to provide welfare services.

Developing the second stimulus ‘the agreement’

The decision to develop an agreement was a turning point because the Agreement became a tool that served as a second stimulus to facilitate expansive learning between the stakeholders from the two sectors, with the possibility of promoting transformative action. The abovementioned process leaders organised workshops to bring together the CSOs and democratically process what would ultimately become the Agreement. This was an emerging process, as one of the process leaders explains:

We put everything on the table to discuss with the [civil society] organisations. (External process leader)

After an information meeting with approximately 50 CSOs, three full-day workshops were carried out over a two-month period. In between the workshops, participatory meetings were held at which the stakeholders’ thoughts were gathered to develop the agreement document. A work group, consisting of the process leaders and key stakeholder representatives from the regional development division at the RAO and some CSOs, formed to jointly write an agreement and present it to the other stakeholders for amendments. To democratically anchor the proposed agreement different techniques were used at the workshops to gather experiences and requests from the CSOs. The first workshop was about prior experiences of collaboration between public sector and civil society organisations. During the second workshop, core values were formed and agreed on. At the third, a preliminary version of the agreement was presented, discussed and amended. During the workshops, the differences in understanding regarding the agreement’s objectives – such as what would be included in the agreement – were a source of critical discussions that revolved around new objectives and old tools (Engeström and Sannino 2010) in connection with working methods and responsibilities between the two sectors. However, the final version of the agreement (henceforth called ‘the Agreement’) was sent out to divisions within the RAO and all CSOs with a request for opinions, before eventually being decided on and signed by the stakeholders.

Interviewees from CSOs recall that the process was swift, and there were fears that the process had been too short and had left out important decisions, such as how to organise and lead future collaboration. The excerpts show this.

We have a document, but it is an incredibly long step to win full support for it and see its potential and how it can be used. In this, we are not close. (CSO representative 11)

Nevertheless, there was a general consensus among the stakeholders that the process of working on the document and the document itself had strengthened the will to cooperate to set transformative actions in motion. One representative said:

I do believe that it is the key to success, we must cooperate. (CSO representative 8)

As such, the Agreement became an artefact to refer to in the coming years, should there be conflicts of motives between the stakeholders (Engeström and Sannino 2021). However, there were fears that the Agreement would be too vague to make a difference, regardless of a sense that cooperation between the CSOs and the RAO was necessary. This feeling was shared by both the CSOs and the regional development division at the RAO. One official said:

The Agreement is a set of principles. It is now that the work begins, what we would like to do. […] Next, we need to start thinking about what we can do together. (Official 2, RAO)

The RAO official believed that the Agreement, which had been ratified by regional politicians by consensus, would not make a difference unless the collaboration and joint learning process in which it was developed were to continue. An RAO official described the usefulness of the Agreement at this point:

The Agreement has led to the recognition of the civil society, so to speak, which has not quite been the case [among RAO officials] before. (Official 4, RAO)

In other words, the Agreement was thought to encourage RAO officials to cooperate more with civil society.

Challenges in the implementation phase following the second stimulus ‘the agreement’

We now present some of the challenges that led to conflicts of motives in the implementation phase after the signing of the Agreement. In this phase the actual stakeholder learning related to changing the way to provide welfare services began. To be able to learn together the stakeholders organised a collaboration platform in which the collaboration eventually became more structured and transparent. When doing so they met some challenges and saw the need to strengthen the collaboration.

Challenge 1 – the development of a collaboration platform between the two sectors

Once signed, the Agreement (second stimulus) initially turned out to be too weak to function as an artefact or tool that would help the stakeholders overcome emerging conflicts of motives (Sannino 2020a) and jointly achieve ways to produce actual welfare services. The first challenge for the constellation between RAO and CSOs was how to organise the collaboration platform and decide on meeting content, and whether the collaboration should be purely strategic or operative, or both. Strategic collaboration would mean that the platform would come up with new ideas and present them to other RAO employees and CSO members who would test and eventually implement welfare services. Operative collaboration would mean that the platform not only came up with new ideas but also led the testing and the implementation of new welfare services.

Two strategists from the regional development division at the RAO had taken up the torch a few months after the signing of the Agreement, and invited all stakeholders to a general meeting at which ideas could be discussed and information shared. Initially, these meetings, which were greatly appreciated by the stakeholders, were a mix of diverse information updates from the RAO, guest lectures and open space activities to engage the participants in the two-hour general meetings that occurred approximately six times a year. After some months, participants from the CSOs, who had been keen to start collaborating operatively in providing welfare services, saw little progress. Some complained that they had to spend most of the general meeting listening to information from the RAO that they had no interest in. One example is when the public transport division within the RAO wanted opinions on a new plan, which took up most of the meeting. One frustrated CSO representative said:

There is a risk, and I am a little pessimistic now, that the process has been so long, and that the risk is that you lose contact with those who feel that nothing concrete is decided. Instead, there are these beautiful words, which may be taxing sometimes. I think that some of these meetings have been incredibly disorganised. (CSO representative 10)

The excerpt above illustrates that there was a growing conflict of motives between the stakeholders who saw the platform as strategic and those who had primarily hoped for a more operative approach. However, there were participants who believed that the platform could serve all purposes, and strategically influence the RAO politicians and officials but also make operative progress regarding new welfare services. Thus, a split will among the participants became a learning barrier that prevented them from moving forward in the transformation process. The Agreement document provided some, but not enough guidance as a shared learning tool for strengthening the stakeholders’ transformative agency (cf. Engeström and Sannino 2021).

By sticking to the Agreement, the stakeholders’ renewed review of the Agreement document guided them in the ongoing transformation process (cf. Sannino 2015). The Agreement document stated that continued work in line with the Agreement would require the stakeholders to organise and coordinate the work. The organisation and coordination work began by appointing a work group that was to organise the general meetings. The work group was later split into smaller groups, which were assigned different tasks such as finding ways to communicate between general meetings and plan for a joint event in which many of the stakeholder organisations could participate. Around this time, the platform was officially announced as a partnership. This strengthened the connections between the CSOs and the RAO, and the first joint operative welfare service was implemented – a massive effort to promote and carry out outdoor activities in the midst of the pandemic. Thus, the collaboration platform, now a partnership, became more operative as forms of working that strengthened the bond between the stakeholders were established (see Figure 1). Nevertheless, there were clear signs that not all of the RAO was onboard, which was manifested by few participants – and sometimes no participants – from the larger healthcare division within the RAO being present at the meetings, and little interest being shown in the operative work. Further, as shown in the following excerpt, the partnership had little strategic influence on the healthcare division.

A bit of strategic work needs to be done but we are not quite there yet, if strategic means that the work connected to the Agreement is to be disseminated throughout the regional authority organisation. (CSO representative 3)

Such dissemination was difficult because of various conflicts of motives within each sector, and between different hierarchical levels in large CSOs and the RAO.

Challenge 2 – conflicts of motives within each sector

While organising the platform in itself took some time, conflicts of motives that work groups and general meetings had jurisdiction over were easier to resolve than conflicts of motives within each individual sector. One major challenge was the horizontal complexity in both sectors. The RAO consisted of different divisions and many types of operations, and a recent merger between the much larger healthcare division and regional development division had not been fully followed through, which contributed to horizontal complexity. This was manifested in several ways. One was the decoupling of the continued Agreement process, guided by regional development strategists in the regional development division at the RAO, and other types of participatory dialogues, which were organised by various operations within the healthcare division of the RAO. This was confusing for some of the CSO representatives, as shown in the excerpt below.

Something that is confusing is that there are so many ongoing processes at the same time [in the RAO]. We often meet the same people in different contexts, but others may also be there. The processes may be connected, but there is no communication between them. (CSO representative 4)

The CSO referred to different political processes, but there were also various participatory dialogues between operations and patient groups, for example disabled persons or persons with a specific illness such as diabetes. The reason for this division is seen in this excerpt:

Well, this [the Agreement] was a politically driven idea, within the framework of regional development, not least driven by the regional development council. So, we have ended up there, within their commission. I think that if we are to move on, the process needs to connect more closely to the healthcare division’s commission. (Official 4, RAO)

Altogether, the excerpts above illustrate the shortcomings of the Agreement and perhaps a need for an internal second stimulus to bring the divisions closer together.

There was a similar challenge for the civil society sector. This concerned who was to be spokesperson for the sector. There was a long-standing partnership between some CSOs with similar objectives and target groups. The civil society partnership was seen by some RAO officials as a spokesperson for the whole of civil society. The reason for this was historical, as they had worked closely with the former regional development organisation in various projects. The partnership was seen as prioritised, thus not well liked by other CSOs, although they had been invited to join the civil society partnership before signing the Agreement. The reason for not wanting to join was both political and practical, as some CSOs had their own collaborative networks with similar civic organisations in which they had worked more closely with to the healthcare division within the RAO. One official explained:

The civil society sector is not a sector in which organisations talk to each other. They are not organised in such a way. We are also not organised to talk to them, and they are not organised to talk to us. I think both sectors have some homework to do on that front. (Official 2, RAO)

To suggest that all the CSOs should join the one civil society partnership can be seen as a failed attempt to implement a second stimulus in the form of closer cooperation within the civil society sector.

Challenge 3 – conflicts of motives between hierarchical levels

There were also challenges in linking together work between different hierarchical levels in large organisations within both sectors. Large CSOs working at the regional level had local organisations to communicate with, and some also had national headquarters. The local organisations were the ones that would do the actual operational work in cooperation with operations from the RAO. The following excerpt is from a person working at the regional level of a large CSO.

Then I need to talk to my seniors to make sure they understand, so they won’t go: ‘I see, you attend these meetings, but they have nothing to do with our organisation.’ No, but maybe it contributes to the whole in that there may be other organisations that can help [us] in other matters. (CSO representative 7)

This person also talked about the difficulties in getting the organisation’s local departments onboard, and continues:

It easily falls into having our [regional] meetings somehow, but who do I represent and how do we get more people involved? (CSO representative 7)

There were also hierarchical issues in the RAO, and a high-ranking RAO official revealed why officials were not obligated to align their work with the Agreement partnership:

All respect to the policymakers, but when there is a politically driven initiative, the issue must still be incorporated into our governing structures, in operational activity plans and so on. So that is my big challenge, to balance this political initiative [enhanced collaboration between sectors] that we do not see traces of in our operational plan. (Official 8, RAO)

The excerpt indicates that politically governed organisations in democratic countries are bureaucratic by default. Officials who work according to plans and resources are allocated accordingly. By that time, the one-year allocation of additional earmarked resources for the work leading to the Agreement process had ended, and receiving new resources proved difficult for two main reasons. There had been general budget cuts and new politicians had been elected. Many of them had not been involved in the decision-making process relating to the Agreement and the process of winning support had to start all over again.

Another RAO official, who was in charge of funding for CSOs in the healthcare division, although appreciating the Agreement, contemplated the lack of mentions of the partnership in the healthcare division’s operational plans and said:

In that sense, so far, I think it is a bit fuzzy. What are we to do now, when we have this Agreement? What are we going to do with it? (Official 4, RAO)

The excerpt above shows that not prioritising the collaboration platform in strategic or operational plans gave unclear mandates or delegation to RAO officials, which meant that they could not prioritise partnership meetings or work according to what had been discussed at partnership meetings. There were also different politicians governing the various divisions through committees that could make decisions without going via the general assembly. Another interviewee was asked a direct question by the interviewer when talking about the vertical complexity.

Interviewer: What is needed in future?

Interviewee: More than anything that RAO top management drives this so that things actually happen. Then each division needs to take responsibility, too. (CSO representative 11)

The described complexities led to internal conflicts of motives in each sector between hierarchical levels which turning to the Agreement did not resolve. Despite this, at local levels both the RAO and CSOs fought to remain committed to the Agreement by sticking to the transformative actions agreed upon.

Conclusion

From a TADS approach, this article has provided insights into stakeholders’ expansive learning and transformative action when developing a collaboration platform between a Swedish regional authority organisation (RAO) and civil society organisations (CSOs) to find new ways to provide welfare services. Specifically, we asked the following questions:

1. How is the collaboration organised within and between the RAO and the CSOs?

2. What challenged the collaborating stakeholders’ learning and transformative action when developing the collaboration platform?

In response to question 1, organisation of the collaboration within and between the RAO and CSOs was based on a democratic transformative process that was constantly adapted to changing conditions in the organisations. This highlights the dynamic nature of a transformative process focusing on societal challenges such as welfare service issues, and how it is tied to the context in which the stakeholders find themselves. In this respect, the RAO and CSOs were not homogenous organisations, regardless of contemplating the differences between the RAO and CSOs or the differences between practices within each of the organisations. Instead, they were multifaceted organisations, with horizontal and hierarchical layers of complex activity systems (Engeström 2001). As the process of organising the collaboration proceeded, contradictions arose between the layers because the stakeholders operated in different sectors, in different divisions (with various operations and departments) in the RAO and in different local and national CSOs. The emergence of these conflicts of motives began at the societal level in the form of a ‘complex welfare problem’ and they were then filtered down to the local contexts within the RAO and the CSOs. As a result of these conflicts of motives, the process of organising the collaboration slowed down but it still seemed to have paved the way for the development of the collaboration platform. The political initiative had offered a way to encourage the RAO and the CSOs to work towards a joint objective regarding welfare services and to organise the work towards it. Support for the political will created a shared understanding among the stakeholders for expansive solutions, resulting in a decision to develop the Agreement, thus stipulating principles for collaboration across the sectors.

In response to question 2, as stakeholders worked to redefine the welfare services, they faced various learning challenges they had to overcome in order to develop shared knowledge and tools for developing the collaboration platform. A major learning challenge for the stakeholders was to navigate exploratively between different types of conflicts of motives emerging in their home organisation, in their home sector or in the collaboration space between the sectors. Conflicts of motives created barriers in the form of disagreements between the RAO and the CSOs, while other conflicts of motives allowed the stakeholders to explore their differences for the purpose of finding a shared solution to provide welfare services.

In the implementation phase, after the signing of the Agreement, there were several conflicts of motives due to the differences in the sectors’ logics regarding the provision of welfare services, which challenged the learning of the stakeholders. Surprisingly, it was not the conflicts of motives between the two sectors, but those within each sector that constituted the most severe expansive learning challenges, which created a delay in developing the collaboration platform for welfare services. The delay may have been due to the Agreement, which at first turned out to be a weak tool (second stimulus), but with the stakeholders’ joint decision to stick to it their path to volitional action was strengthened and they could continue to accomplish what they had set out to do. Conflicts of motives still continued to emerge, as the stakeholders discussed and identified matters of concern as part of their expansive learning process aimed at developing the collaboration platform. Some of the matters of concern served as mediating tools for building shared transformative agency (Virkkunen 2006). By sticking to the Agreement, the collaboration platform was eventually officially announced as a partnership, which can be seen as an uptake of another second stimulus, moving the stakeholders incrementally forward to overcome the challenges. This implies that by accomplishing what the collaboration platform had agreed on in the Agreement meant democratically resolving underlying conflicts of motives, the stakeholders learned expansively and expanded opportunities to take transformative actions, albeit in small, incremental steps that were necessary but not immediately recognised as steps towards new ways to provide welfare services.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The seven principles independence and equality, dialogue and information, quality and evaluation, resilience, openness, diversity and innovation.