Strategizing and “strategifying” for the common good: the case of deprived neighborhoods in the Swedish city of Gothenburg

Abstract

Globally, we face grand challenges such as poverty and climate change. In response to such challenges, previous research claims that strategy research should address the “major challenges of contemporary society” this article examines a strategy adopted in Gothenburg, Sweden in an attempt to create an inclusive city through various actions in vulnerable areas. Using the concepts of strategizing and strategifying, the study shows how an attempt to address this challenge put pressure not only on the organization adopting the strategic document, but also on collaborating organizations. This illustrates how a strategic approach to a common challenge can create new organizational solutions and strengthen collaborating networks, although this might also lead to tension between organizations.

Introduction

Globally, we face significant and grand challenges (Ferraro, Etzion, and Gehman 2015; Jarzabkowski et al. 2019). These challenges are large, complex, persistent, and have a strong social component, examples being poverty and climate change (Jarzabkowski et al. 2019; Sørensen and Torfing 2021). In response to these challenges, Vaara and Durand (2012:252) claimed that strategy research must address the “major challenges of contemporary society”. More recently, and since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nonaka and Takeuchi (2021:1) similarly argued that strategy should be about creating “a better future” and “maximizing the common good.” In practice, this requires that organizations work together to jointly and strategically address societal challenges (Ferraro, Etzion, and Gehman 2015; Sachs 2012), as these challenges cross organizational boundaries, responsibilities, and interests (e.g., Brorström and Diedrich 2022; Bryson et al. 2017; Crosby, ‘t Hart, and Torfing 2017).

Here, we apply the concept of “the common good” with reference to the common challenges facing the public sector, challenges where no one is in charge, power is shared, and shared leadership is required (Crosby and Bryson 2005). The common good refers to interests shared by the community (Pesci, Costa, and Andreaus 2020), indicating a need to address common problems across organizational boundaries, involving both public and private interests. By jointly addressing the common good, the idea is that the ensuing development will benefit all involved actors (Pesci, Costa, and Andreaus 2020). Similarly, Bryson, Ackermann, and Eden (2016) argued that organizations from different sectors can target shared goals, in what has been called the collaborative advantage (cf. Huxham and Vangen 2013). Arguably, however, tensions might arise in this process between an organization’s narrow focus and broader societal values (Burns and Jollands 2020). Simultaneously, it can be difficult to uphold long-term ambitions in public organizations when practitioners must engage with short-term practices (Brorström 2023; Osborne et al. 2014, 2015; Moldavanova and Goerdel 2018). This process has sometimes been called mission drift, i.e., “a process through which an organization deviates from its original purpose or mission” (Bousalham and Vidaillet 2018:405; see also Brorström and Styhre 2021). Here, it is important to consider what actions are being taken based on broad, ambitious strategies: How do we know that what we are doing is actually furthering our ambitions and goals, and how can we account for this?

Public organizations adopt strategic planning because users believe it will help them decide what their organizations should do, why and how (Bryson, Crosby, and Bryson 2009). From a public management perspective, Bryson and George (2020:2) explained that strategic management includes strategic planning and strategy implementation through various means, such as organizational design, resource management, performance management, and change management. Strategic planning is further said to be an approach to identifying an overall strategic framework with the aim of having a common purpose (cf. Bryson 2018). Strategic planning has arguably evolved toward a more general managerial approach connected to daily organizational practices (Klijn and Koppenjan 2020). Moreover, Klijn and Koppenjan (2020) recently noted that the public strategic planning and network governance literatures have developed in parallel. Yet, many strategic initiatives, such as that studied here, are conducted across organizations and with the aim of creating public value, which research ought to acknowledge. Moreover, according to George et al. (2020), practitioners in public organizations “do” strategic planning when deliberately formulating strategies for goal achievement. They argue, however, that how the practitioners do their strategizing is what truly matters (cf. George 2017). The link between strategy and performance has been discussed from a public management perspective: George, Walker, and Monster (2019) argued that having a strategic plan is not enough, and Elbanna, Andrews, and Pollanen (2016) showed that formal planning has an indirect role in strategy implementation via managers who mediate the strategic intent.

In the Swedish city of Gothenburg, the city council in its 2020 annual budget adopted the goal of removing the city’s “especially vulnerable neighborhoods” from the national Police Authority’s list by 2025. This list contains geographically constrained Swedish neighborhoods characterized by low socioeconomic status and where criminals affect the local community. Gothenburg has six such neighborhoods. In the budget document, the public housing group AB Framtiden¹ was tasked with striving to remove these neighborhoods from the list by the end of 2025. Framtiden Group comprises a parent corporation and eight subsidiaries: one development corporation, five municipal housing corporations owning much of the building stock in the studied neighborhoods, one corporation managing public space, and one corporation providing emergency security services in various neighborhoods. This housing group, with its new CEO, took the lead and quickly developed a strategy with the ambitious goal of removing all identified neighborhoods from the list by the stated date. The strategic document states that the housing group will invest about SEK 11 billion with SEK 7 billion being earmarked for new developments and renovations and SEK 4 billion for other projects to help renew the areas. Although the strategic intentions entailed substantial financial investment—an unprecedented amount in the city—in order to succeed, the housing group, including its subsidiaries, would need to collaborate with multiple private and public organizations in the neighborhoods, such as other housing companies, local businesses, schools, local police, employment services, and local sports associations.

The underlying idea was that ongoing development in these neighborhoods had to be addressed jointly by all concerned, and that if this was done properly, all involved actors would benefit—a “win–win” situation. Removing the neighborhoods from the police list would entail working in new and innovative ways to increase the available resources in these neighborhoods and to increase ongoing, and develop new forms of, public–private collaboration. On top of its investments, AB Framtiden’s ambition was to create what it called a “super administration,” meaning that it should leverage its current capacities to expand and improve. Yet the ambition itself, and whether and how the strategic work would positively affect the neighborhoods, was unclear and up for interpretation. Besides being a problem of definition, this was because it was not for the city but for the Police Authority to decide what neighborhoods were listed, and the details of how the Authority evaluates neighborhoods are not entirely clear.

As the strategic document targeting especially vulnerable areas in Gothenburg had no precedent, the activities undertaken to address the challenge had to be strategic; we therefore use the concept of “strategifying” to refer to the “shifting boundaries” of what was regarded as strategic and to highlighting the aspirational change of strategizing (Bryson and George 2020). This strategifying was followed by strategizing activities based on this new strategic intention and change of aspirations. The aim of this article is thus, by using the concepts of strategizing and strategifying (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018) to analyze the practice of working with strategy to address a complex challenge, considering the actions taken and challenges encountered. This also takes account of the multiple actors shaping “the boundaries of strategy within and outside organizations” (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018:265). We contribute to the literature on public strategic management by adding the strategifying concept to the discussion and showing how it is part of what public-sector strategists do (George 2017), especially regarding complex shared problems. We claim that if strategifying is successful, it enables further strategizing, and we show how organizational actors engage in both strategizing and strategifying. These insights also foster an understanding of what challenges public-sector practitioners face.

Frame of reference: strategizing and strategifying for the common good

Strategizing is an important organizational practice (Golsorkhi et al. 2015; Jarzabkowski, Balogun, and Seidl 2007) that crosses organizational boundaries (Bryson and George 2020). Strategizing indicates that strategy is not something public-sector entities “have”—a reification of strategy—but rather something they “do”—meaning a practice (Golsorkhi et al. 2015). According to Bryson and George (2020:6), strategizing consists of activities undertaken by organizations to deliberately and emergently (re)align aspirations and capabilities. Strategizing thus concerns exploring how aspirations can be achieved within a given context and about the need to develop current capabilities or change the context.

Ferlie and Ongaro (2015) divided strategizing into strategic thinking, acting, and learning. Strategizing is thus thinking about how to achieve a certain goal as well as about the context of that goal and how it could be changed (Bryson 2018; Bryson, Crosby, and Bryson 2009). Acting entails taking action based on this goal, and learning is “any change in a system (which could be an individual) that by better adapting it to its environment produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity to pursue its purposes” (Bryson 2018:14). Based on studying a social enterprise, Bryson, Crosby, and Seo (2022) argued that strategizing involves thinking, acting, and learning activities in an interconnected and pragmatic way. They claimed that strategizing is the product of a team or group effort, through an unfolding process, and that it involves several organizations at multiple levels. Finally, they also showed how strategizing is likely to be uneven and episodic.

Recent research notes that strategizing is a craft engaged in by many actors, and not just something done by an organization’s top management (Balogun, Best, and Lê 2015; Balogun and Johnson 2004). Begkos, Llewellyn, and Walshe (2020), for example, noted the important role of middle managers in strategizing. Moreover, calling something “strategic” was previously noted to create attention, resources, and finally legitimacy in an organization (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018; Kornberger and Clegg 2011). Being identified as strategic could therefore facilitate a project, ambition, or investment in an organization (Vaara, Sorsa, and Pälli 2010).

Although we know that labeling something as strategic has this facilitating potential, we do not know how the various meanings of strategy are perceived by organizational actors “in practice” (Paroutis and Heracleous 2013:936). Similarly, we lack knowledge of how attention shifts and how something becomes strategic—that is, how actors make things strategic, or in other words strategifying (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018). Strategifying work is said to be done to shift the boundaries of what is considered strategic in an organization (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018) and to highlight how some strategic intentions become institutionalized (Jarzabkowski 2008). This can be seen as part of strategizing and of what Bryson and George (2020) argued is a need to develop new capabilities. Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian (2018), in studying CSR practices at an energy corporation, identified three forms of strategifying work: cognitive coupling to make CSR identical to the strategy through, for example, communicative practices (cf. Bencherki et al. 2021); relational coupling, comprising political activities that, for example, alter links between actors through boundary spanning and networking; and material coupling, referring to practices of incorporating, in their case, CSR into existing organizational indicators and measures and of creating new indicator systems. Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian (2018) observed that the intensity of these forms of strategifying work gradually shifted, from an initial strong focus on cognitive coupling to relational and eventually material coupling. The authors advocated further analyzing how the different types of strategifying work interact with existing strategizing practices, and how strategifying enables or prevents further strategizing. We use this as a starting point. The strategifying concept is useful in the studied case (and in public contexts in general), as there was a new strategic intention, regarded as coming “from above,” and accordingly a need to shift the boundaries of what was deemed strategic in the city organization. This suggests that strategizing and strategifying complement each other in strategic change processes, and that strategifying is part of strategizing. Here, however, we use both concepts in showing how strategy shifts within an organization and to illuminate the shifting boundaries of strategizing

For a strategy to be successful it requires commitment and organizational support (Ackermann and Eden 2011; Bryson et al. 2022). Accordingly, the narrative of the strategic work might be as important as what is actually stated in the strategic document (cf. Brorström 2020). Kornberger, Meyer, and Höllerer (2021) argued that a strategy might eventually change the “thought style” of an organization, and that this might be an important development when addressing grand challenges. The common good can be considered a mission driver, a source of inspiration for action (Pesci, Costa, and Andreaus 2020), and close to the aim of the strategic work studied here. This means that the common good represents a form of “mission” involved in orienting organizational actions—i.e., strategifying (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018).

This discussion also concerns the idea of strategizing as part of achieving shared goals and therefore of creating public value (Moore 1995). This is because the idea of public value is that public organizations, through their strategies, can achieve important public goals (Bryson et al. 2021). Bryson and George (2020:3) accordingly defined strategy as “a concrete approach to aligning the aspirations and the capabilities of public organizations or other entities in order to achieve goals and create public value.” A challenge encountered when a strategy is to address the common good is that assessing public values could be problematic due to their ambiguous character (Bryson et al. 2017). The challenge of addressing the common good is not always easy to define, and responding to it with action creates latitude for differences (Farrell 2011; Fiorino 2010). There is no single right answer or solution to such challenges (Bebbington and Larrinaga 2014; Burns and Jollands 2020). The common good is, moreover, not about all actors doing the same thing, but rather about actors doing different things but inspired by the same goal. As a concept, the common good is clearly separate from the individual level, and in collaborations in which organizations differ in background, interests, size, and age, organizations must marshal diverse resources (Gray and Purdy 2018; Hilbolling et al. 2022).

Methods, case, and data collection

The case builds on an ongoing longitudinal study of strategic work to remove Gothenburg neighborhoods from the Police Authority’s list of especially vulnerable neighborhoods. The strategic intentions in this case were presented in a document adopted in 2020 and to be in force until at least 2025. This strategic document was, as mentioned, a response to a goal set by the city council in its annual budget document. Some argued that tasking the housing group with removing neighborhoods from this list was a mistake, because issues in these areas concern socioeconomic inequity, lack of employment, and poor school results, not housing. Others argued that the “freer” role and scope of the public housing sector was a good reason for tasking this group, and not others. This disagreement permits interesting discussions of the role of public housing companies in assuming responsibilities that are not entirely theirs.

This article examines the first two years of the strategic process, when the new strategic intentions are presented and the involved actors are meant to start working from this basis. As no previous strategy document describes the intentions regarding these neighborhoods, this process is intended to shift the boundaries of what is considered strategic in the city. Adding the strategifying concept to the discussion of strategizing was seen as enabling analysis of this process. It has previously been argued that studies of strategic processes often assume that a key to understanding the effectiveness of strategic planning concerns the complexity of and longitudinal approach to knowing and acting (Ferlie and Ongaro 2015). This fits well with the character of the process studied here.

The Framtiden parent corporation and its subsidiaries are all municipally owned corporations, i.e., organizations with independent corporate status that are managed by an executive board appointed by local government (Voorn, Van Genugten, and Van Thiel 2017). Notably, 2011 legislation means that public housing companies in Sweden must now achieve profit margins set by politicians and be “business like” (Westerdahl 2021). For Gothenburg and its new strategy, this means that the local public housing corporations must remove all vulnerable areas from the Police Authority list by 2025, doing so based on business-like principles. In the strategic documents this is possible, but in reality, it might be more difficult, especially as these corporations must accomplish this in cooperation with others. Previous research has identified the challenge of establishing effective collaboration between a municipal corporation and the local administration (Cuganesan, Hart, and Steele 2017).

Attempting to break down segregation is nothing new for Swedish cities, and it has been questioned whether segregation is even a problem that can be targeted by government policies (Andersson 2006). Nevertheless, given the issues faced in the studied neighborhoods, efforts to ameliorate their vulnerable status have been reinforced. An associated problem is that of measurability. Hincks (2017) claimed that while many have attempted to measure deprivation in neighborhoods, the measures used have been criticized for being only “snapshots” and not capturing changes over time. Hincks noted that change attempts in neighborhoods often adopt a target year when change is to be manifest, leading to an emphasis on the target year that means that shorter-term change patterns are overlooked. Hincks (2017) emphasized the importance of reporting annual change in such vulnerable areas. Another problem when measuring developments in deprived neighborhoods, and in addressing grand challenges more generally, is that “what we measure is ultimately a manifestation of what we care about” (Glasser 2019:63).

Data collection

The underlying empirical data for this article are interviews with and observations of various actors involved in the strategic work, for example, representatives of Framtiden Group (including its subsidiaries), private housing companies in the neighborhoods, schools in the areas, and private construction companies. Details of these interviewees appear in Table 1. In total, 24 interviews were conducted with various actors.

Table 1. Interviewees.

Organization	Interviews	Purpose
Parent corporation	Five interviews with people at a management level: CEO, staff managers, and other managers	To understand the aim of the new strategy and how it was to be realized
Municipal housing corporations	Nine interviews with district managers, two CEOs of subsidiaries, and project leaders	To gain insights into strategy application from those “receiving” the strategy
Private construction corporations	Three managers from three private construction corporations interested in working in the neighborhoods	Private construction companies were included as they showed interest in investing in the targeted areas and were therefore included in collaborative projects
Private housing corporations	One district manager and one employee responsible for social sustainability	Private actors were affected by the new strategic intentions and were included in collaborative projects
Other	Five interviews with employees of the school department, the planning department, and a local school, as well as a manager of a BID^2 organization	The city’s various departments were involved as they “owned” issues and had responsibilities that the housing corporations were to address with the new strategy

Two of the six neighborhoods, Hjällbo and Bergsjön, were studied more closely than the others. Hjällbo was considered a pilot project, and the idea was to start implementing the strategy there. Hjällbo was also chosen because the AB Framtiden housing group, through its subsidiaries, owns 98% of the building stock there, giving it a strong mandate to improve neighborhood conditions. In Hjällbo, Framtiden Group took the initiative and invited private construction companies, together with actors such as the city districts, planning authority, and housing department, to start planning the area’s future. The aim was to foster new development in the area, renovating and investing jointly in projects for the residents. When the new strategy was adopted, the Hjällbo project had already been established as ongoing collaboration in the neighborhood. Within this project, we observed three meetings in which plans were discussed and collaboration was taking shape. The meetings were first held in person in Hjällbo, but later, due to COVID-19, using Teams software.

Bergsjön was considered a good neighborhood to study because Framtiden’s subsidiaries do not own as much of the housing stock there as in Hjällbo; instead, nine public and private housing corporations operate there. The large number of actors involved resulted in their working together in a BID organization, in which private and public housing corporations’ representatives meet every second week to discuss shared problems and solutions. Each year, this BID organization decided on a small shared budget, to be able to solve minor problems quickly. Meetings of this organization were observed three times over the study period, mostly to hear the discussions held, record the issues raised, and note the actors present, to be able to ask insightful questions in later interviews. During these observations, we took field notes that we later read and used in the data analysis. The interviews and observations together gave a good overview of the ongoing work.

The empirical data were analyzed by first reading all the interview transcripts to discern the interviewees’ ideas about the shared problems and solutions in general and about the strategy in particular. These transcripts were then reread and general themes were identified. These themes were what Gioia, Corley, and Hamilton (2013) called “first-order concepts” and referred to various activities linked to realizing the strategy. These themes were then developed and coded according to the three types of couplings identified by Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian (2018), to reveal how the actors determined what was and was not strategically important. This more deductive process helped us identify second-order categories (Gioia et al. 2013). In this process we were seeking, in line with Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian (2018), activities that shifted the boundaries of the strategic work. Interestingly, in this case there were many activities that, although ongoing for several years, were not initially seen as strategic but simply as everyday activities or institutionalized practices. Treating them as strategic thus indicated boundary shifts and illustrated the strategifying work needed. We also sought strategizing activities, i.e., activities based on the new strategic intentions and thus also based on the strategifying work. As the data comprised material collected during the first year and a half since adoption of the strategic document, we were attempting to illustrate how the strategifying work took off in the initial phase of the strategic process. All three couplings were obvious in the material, yet their intensity varied over time and will continue to do so (Table 2).

Table 2. Data analysis.

Activities	Second-order practices	Strategifying work	Linking strategifying and strategizing
Talking about and disseminating the new strategy Taking and showing responsibility The municipal housing corporations are given a strategic role	Problem definition The premise of the strategic intention Links between problems and solutions—everything is related Linking the development to what is to be regarded as the “common good,” especially as the task is not “owned” by the housing corporations A goal shared among the municipal housing corporations, various collaborating partners, and Framtiden subsidiaries	Cognitive coupling Shifting the boundaries, both mentally and organizationally, of what the strategy implies	The cognitive coupling leads to strategizing, as actions are justified in a new way Sayings such as “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” describe strategifying work and lead to many actions Strategizing also means “being bold enough to act”—any action is preferable to no action
Developing new and/or stronger forms of collaboration Jointly signing documents Getting others on board Employing individuals with varied backgrounds and professions New documents and other management tools	Shared challenge requires collaboration Links between the organizations and the common good Expanding expertise and knowledge by inviting and employing others in the process Trust building Empowering employees	Relational coupling Creating new relations and inviting other experts Coupling and decoupling activities relative to the strategic work	Framing strategic aspirations as for the common good favors involving more partners, since the issues are shared
Discussions of how investments in hard projects will lead to better handling of soft issues Positioning ongoing work relative to the new strategy Showing youths alternatives	Systemizing Explanation of what a strategic project is and why it is considered strategic Discussions of how to connect the projects to the overall strategic intention Discussions of cause and effect as well as reflexive and pragmatic discussions of what to do	Material coupling Decoupling and recoupling between the housing corporations and the parent corporation	Various actions are conducted or being planned; these have previously been “strategified” and are now seen as “strategic”
Doing all everyday tasks first to make room for new activities Doing more than just everyday tasks New employees have new everyday tasks	Shared responsibility for activities and goals Measuring and systemizing are challenges due to the strategy’s shared character as well as the long-term focus, yet there is a need to show action and results quickly	Accountability coupling New relationships, experts, and employees imply discussion of responsibility and accountability both within and across organizations	Action—no matter what! Over time, more or less in accordance with the initial ambition

In analyzing the empirical data, we conceptualized strategifying as shifting the boundaries around the strategic work in the involved organizations and then used the three types of couplings identified by Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian (2018) as the starting point. We then added the strategizing concept, here seen in activities linked to the aspirations. By doing this, we could discuss the relationship between the strategifying work and strategizing work, even though these naturally sometimes overlapped.

Findings

Problem definition: what is the common challenge and how should we tackle it?

The strategic document was adopted in spring 2020, and after summer that year, the involved organizations were to start working according to the new strategic intentions. As activities to address the challenges in the targeted neighborhoods had not previously been subject to strategic planning, there was a need to shift boundaries to enable the strategic work. This was evident when many interviewees discussed the premise of the strategic intention, i.e., the politicians had tasked the housing sector with redirecting development in the listed neighborhoods when there were many relevant issues that the public housing corporations could not address on their own. For some this was ideologically problematic, whereas for others this was simply a fact to be dealt with—what was important was that something was being done. All the interviewees discussed what were sometimes claimed to be “the real problems” in these neighborhoods, saying that they had to be spoken about more. The interviewees said that the real problem was poverty, and that alleviating it was a challenge that entailed many other challenges situated between the actors’ various domains and thus constituted common challenges. The challenges associated with poverty were arguably not solvable by investments in better lighting, surveillance systems, new housing alternatives, or after-school activities for children. One interviewee said that they were mostly treating the symptoms, not the actual problems, whereas another interviewee said that they had to do both: “If you have eczema, you need a salve, but also someone figuring out why you got the eczema in the first place” (Interview, BID organization). This description of the “real problem” was said by the interviewee to illustrate that the most important thing was that the people living in the neighborhoods should have work. Although that seems straightforward, being employable entails, for example, having an education, speaking Swedish, knowing about Swedish society, and not having been involved in criminal activities. If residents are to be made employable, the municipal housing corporations will have to take on many different activities.

To better tackle this “real” problem in the future, most interviewees argued that it was crucial to ensure that students in local schools achieved better results and could graduate with good grades. Having schools whose students graduated with good grades was also important for the private corporations, as this would make it easier for them to sell apartments in the neighborhoods, as they claimed that few families would want to buy apartments in an area where the school was not considered good. In interviews and at meetings, the importance of creating after-school activities for the children was discussed, to ensure that they are busy doing sports or other activities and not becoming involved in criminality. An issue in these neighborhoods was said to be that most children did not have a right to after-school childcare organized through the municipality, because one or both of their parents were not working. This meant that after-school activities had to be provided immediately after school had finished; this would ensure that the youths did not have to go home beforehand, as there was the risk that they might not return to the school premises for activities held later on. These activities were intended both to keep the children busy and to show them an alternative future.

These after-school activities were a response to the problem, mentioned by one interviewee, that children growing up in these neighborhoods lacked imaginable alternatives and did not always comprehend that, for example, selling drugs was wrong: so many were doing it that it had become normalized. Interviewees argued that these neighborhoods needed a change of mindset, in which the youths growing up in them changed how they regarded their future opportunities. One interviewee said that these youths needed role models who could illustrate that there were alternatives; the interviewee said that there was a lack of “real, low-key alternatives—you are either selling drugs, making pizza, driving a taxi, or you become Zlatan”³ (Interview, public servant, school department). The interviewee argued that there needed to be a vision that it is fine to live a simple suburban life and have a 9–5 job. To give youths images of other opportunities, the importance of summer jobs was raised.

The strategy document adopted by the Framtiden parent corporation involved multiple actions and practices, in an attempt to change the image of the target neighborhoods and the mindset of their residents. As it is the subsidiaries that work on site in the neighborhoods, the Framtiden parent corporation used a top–down approach in which all its subsidiaries were commanded to respond to the overall strategy by formulating action plans, a form of response strategy. Some interviewees saw this as too much of a top–down management approach, not taking into account what was already going on. One interviewee said:

I think it is unfortunate that there are so few people living here who know about this investment. … Well, some do but not as many as I had hoped for, that they would have included people here in this work. … It was like a sudden bolt of lightning, that now we should do all these things, but I am the one who knows what is needed here. (Interview, manager of municipal housing corporation)

As the challenges here were shared across organizations and were complex with many associated challenges, widely varied actions were sought. Actions were said to be needed on a “broad front” crossing departmental boundaries, but with a shared goal of having the neighborhoods removed from the Police Authority list.

A shared issue requires collaboration

Because the challenges and the measures in response described in the strategic document were not typically managed by the housing corporations, there was a need to involve diverse actors in the work. This meant shifting the boundaries of the strategic management to facilitate measures that others would respond to. The problems in these neighborhoods led to an attitude that anything done there was good, meaning that the municipal housing companies could do no wrong and that “any action is preferable to no action.” As well, the newly adopted strategy gave these actions urgency and legitimized all forms of action taken. Consequently, one interviewee called the strategic document a “cowboy strategy … in the best sense of the word cowboy.” The strategic intentions were also called entrepreneurial and courageous, although the interviewee said that there would be unforeseen hindrances and that there would be considerable uncertainty, but that they “will do it anyway.” Interviewees from the AB Framtiden parent corporation said that they had to start even though they did not have “all the facts”: “We must stop talking and start acting, and do what we can,” was repeated in the interviews. The impossibility and boldness of the strategy’s aim created latitude for action and the view that it was all right to make mistakes, i.e., “it is better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.” This discourse was said to empower the employees to act—in any way deemed suitable. This in turn implied latitude and new tasks for new employees with unusual backgrounds. One interviewee explained:

I had no experience of facility management, but I understood, when they reached out to me, that it was not what they really wanted—there are so many others who are good at facility management. What they wanted was someone who could systematize the development of the area, and who understood the city organization. (Interview, district manager, municipal housing corporation)

The interviewee continued by saying that this new role involved collaborating with other actors and driving development in the neighborhood. Working in this way meant acting differently and complementing the private actors, being a tool with which the city could improve these neighborhoods.

Although the new strategy permits new forms of collaboration and projects, interviewees working in the neighborhood also said that, even before the new strategy, they were already doing many things to “even out the differences between these neighborhoods and the rest of the city” and that goals had previously been formulated in the subsidiaries’ budget documents. One interviewee said that the work now consisted of positioning all the ongoing actions relative to the new goal and context. One district manager said:

I understood quite soon that here, for decades, they have had enthusiasts who have worked very hard and a lot, but under the radar. So, I came [when starting the job] to an organization that had worked hard for a long time, all the employees were passionate about this [i.e., developing the neighborhood], but their efforts lacked a larger context. (Interview, district manager, municipal housing corporation)

From the municipal housing corporations’ perspective, this meant seeing all their ongoing projects—helping youths with homework, summer employment, and having security personnel always present in the neighborhoods—relative to a larger aim. However, as the interviewees argued, all these “extra” projects only make sense if the corporations discharge their basic responsibilities first. For the municipal housing corporations this meant, for example, keeping the neighborhoods safe and clean with functioning lights. If they did not do this first, they believed that they would not have the residents’ trust to undertake the other projects, which included tasks only loosely associated with their basic responsibilities. However, the tasks and projects the housing corporations took on were responsibilities that naturally belong to other organizations, such as schools or security companies. One interviewee said, when asked why the person doing a certain task was from a housing corporation, that “the [housing] corporations have quite a lot of power and large muscles—I mean in the form of money. That makes it easier to work” (Interview, manager, municipal housing corporation). This was confirmed by other interviewees, who said that if one wanted to develop these neighborhoods, it could more easily be done by a housing corporation than a city department. Even so, the nature of the shared challenge meant that, to work toward the ambitious goal, the housing group had to collaborate with other organizations— “development is collaboration,” as one interviewee said. However, many collaborative activities were already in progress before the application of the new strategy, which simply clarified the goal and formalized the existing collaboration. One district manager from a private housing corporation said that, due to the new strategic intentions, the corporation had signed a joint letter of intent with ten other organizations, private and public. The interviewee described the point of doing this as follows:

We do not want to just move a problem around. I believe that you cannot eliminate a drug problem here [i.e., in one part of the neighborhood] … by just moving it to some other part of the neighborhood, for some other organization to deal with. Therefore, we all must tackle it [i.e., the problem] together. (Interview, district manager, private housing corporation)

Investing in new housing was arguably a means to eliminate part of the neighborhood that is problematic. Yet the question remains as to whether the problem will simply end up somewhere else instead.

The new strategy not only favored increased collaboration with other organizations, but was also said to be a way of improving collaboration within the housing group. One interviewee said that there had sometimes been “power struggles” between the subsidiaries and that the new strategy would facilitate collaboration, as the subsidiaries now shared a common goal. Another interviewee said that collaborating across the subsidiaries was a novel idea, as they had previously been encouraged to compete. If the shared goal was to be achieved, this former attitude had to change, but the organizational culture could take some time to change. Some also argued that if one was serious about changing developments in these neighborhoods, the city organizations’ various departments would have to prioritize them. Some said, for example, that it would be good if the city planning department prioritized detailed planning in these neighborhoods over others. Yet, the politicians in city council had not assigned the planning department the complementary task of planning for change in the targeted neighborhoods. Those employed in the planning department were nevertheless repeatedly invited to various collaborations and discussions with the aim of making them see the importance of prioritizing the targeted neighborhoods.

Systematizing and measuring

Because much of the work initially concerned coupling what was already happening in the neighborhoods with the new strategy in order to put the ongoing work in context, it became important to illustrate how well the neighborhoods were developing as a result of the strategy. As most interviewees mentioned, the goal of removing all the neighborhoods from the Police Authority list before 2025 was regarded as overly ambitious and probably impossible. This created the challenge of how to measure progress and determine whether the work was heading in the right direction. Moreover, the challenges in these neighborhoods were to be addressed through varied project forms. This “projectification” occurred because the common challenge was so complex that it required action in many forms, which also justified costs. As one interviewee said,

Everything can be justified, if there is a problem. Then we calculate the cost, and think that we will not have that cost in the future, and that will be good for the neighborhood in the long run. (Interview, district manager, private housing corporation)

Performance measures for the parent corporation, however, became decoupled from those used by people working on tasks and projects “on the ground” who needed to know whether they were improving matters. For these employees, helping one person out of poverty or criminality is a success that obviously makes a great difference for that person and family. Others, however, argued that this way of gauging how well the projects were going risked becoming anecdotal, with progress not being evident at the macro level.

At the overall city level, reports are produced every year with statistics on the various city neighborhoods. These “equality reports” present various socioeconomic measures covering, for example, unemployment, education, social welfare, and criminality. The hope is that these statistics will eventually indicate that the neighborhoods are improving. Yet there is a gap between the individual projects and these macro statistics. One interviewee argued that this gap was associated with the reality that when projects succeed, the resulting better-off individuals might well move elsewhere in the city. This means that, although the neighborhoods might not change according to the overall statistics, the projects are still successful. There was thus a gap between individual project results and the overall statistics on the neighborhoods. For the municipal housing corporations, this makes it important to invest in more new housing, to induce those who might otherwise leave to remain in the neighborhoods. One district manager of a municipal housing corporation said that, from a business perspective, it is good for them if private companies want to build housing in the neighborhoods, so the corporation was in favor of collaborating with private actors.

The goal of having the neighborhoods removed from the Police Authority list entailed other challenges, including that it is not the city that decides whether the goal has been reached. Another challenge is that the Police Authority is not totally transparent in how it measures deprivation: it is said to be based on both statistics and a subjective “feeling.” This lack of transparency was not deemed a problem by the interviewees, at least not at the time of this study.

To succeed with the strategic intentions and ultimately achieve the goal of having the neighborhoods removed from the Police Authority list, many interviewees said that the neighborhood residents also had to take responsibility. Although the strategic intentions were initially regarded as top–down in approach, they will not succeed if the residents’ mindset does not also change. However, it will be a great challenge to inform and involve the residents at a later stage. The municipal housing sector has recently been criticized for becoming too powerful in these neighborhoods, attempting to steer the residents while controlling who can rent an apartment, giving them an unfair advantage. It is inclusion, but on an unfair basis. One interviewee described the municipal housing corporations as “small states” that could be “wet blankets” smothering ongoing initiatives and limiting neighborhood development. It will be a challenge for Framtiden Group to balance its attempts to steer development toward the goal, while creating latitude for local initiatives and the involvement of local residents.

Discussion: strategizing and strategifying for the common good

In the present case, there were simultaneous strategizing and strategifying efforts because of the adopted strategy targeting especially vulnerable neighborhoods in the city of Gothenburg. First, strategifying was needed, as the strategic intentions studied here targeted challenges addressed by no previous strategy, illustrating how strategifying can be regarded as preceding strategizing (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018), yet also as a specific form of strategizing as it develops current capabilities or changes the context (Bryson and George, 2020). The city organization, in this case mainly through the Framtiden housing group and its subsidiaries, had to raise awareness of the new intentions and that strategizing based on them was to start. This was needed in order to change the organizational “thought style” (Kornberger, Meyer, and Höllerer 2021). There was also a need to start soon, as the target year of 2025 was approaching quickly. The urgency of the strategic work intensified the strategifying, but might have slowed the strategizing as a lot was already happening in these areas, which had not previously been regarded as strategic. This meant that people working in the various municipal housing corporations were initially hesitant about the new strategy and felt that their ongoing work was not being taken into account.

This shows that when strategifying toward a common good, various actors must simultaneously understand their roles in realizing the shared strategic intentions (Crosby and Bryson 2005; Huxham and Vangen 2013). The analysis identifies the difficulties and overlaps of strategizing and strategifying work (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018). Here, the three forms of strategifying work identified by Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian (2018) guided the empirical analysis. All three forms were evident in the attempt to make the vulnerable areas a strategic concern for the city of Gothenburg, although they did overlap, as discussed below.

Cognitive coupling: a shared responsibility

First, the cognitive coupling, i.e., the strategic intentions “shared” between actors, was obvious. The strategy work reported here is very much a city narrative that created the mindset that action is important, as there is no time to keep talking (e.g., Kornberger, Meyer, and Höllerer 2021). This shifted the boundaries of strategic work within the city organization, as the targeted issue had not previously been regarded as strategic. At this point, there was a sense of urgency to address the problems encountered in the vulnerable areas. From the city’s perspective, with Framtiden Group as a pioneer, the ambitious strategy was a way to induce both the internal organization and external actors from other organizations working in the neighborhoods to act. By investing and being extremely clear as to how much was involved (i.e., SEK 11 billion over five years), the intention was to induce others to follow, a tactic that seemed to work early on. By communicating that this was strategic, the Framtiden parent corporation put pressure on other organizations and on its subsidiaries (Vaara et al. 2010). Initially, the work emphasized identifying the common challenge, cognitively coupling the new strategy with the ongoing work in the neighborhoods through communicative efforts. However, this was criticized for being done via a top–down approach in which neither the residents nor the employees were informed of or included in the work. As others have claimed, strategizing occurs at all levels of organizations (Balogun, Best, and Lê 2015; Balogun and Johnson 2004), so including the residents and employees later on is crucial, although it entails new challenges.

This strategifying led to strategizing as it entailed learning about the challenges encountered and discussing possible means to tackle them (cf. Bryson 2018). The outcome of this learning might be acting differently in the future and potentially also changing the strategic intentions. Strategizing came to be not so much about exactly what to do, but about doing something—anything. This was intended to make strategizing be about action and about being bold enough to act without having all the facts. This approach goes well with the incremental, pragmatic approach to tackling grand challenges (Ferraro, Etzion, and Gehman 2015). The focus on actions also illustrates the importance of strategifying as a way of making room for strategic actions and the potential overlap among actions, reactions, strategifying, and strategizing (cf. Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018).

Relational coupling

Relational coupling (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018) was probably the strongest form of strategifying observed during the study period, as the strategy document suggested that this was a challenge shared by many actors—a common challenge (Pesci, Costa, and Andreaus 2020). Consequently, many different organizational actors felt an urgent need to respond to the Framtiden Group’s strategy by adopting associated strategies for their neighborhoods and specific interests. Many projects are already in progress in these neighborhoods, and there is a need to couple these ongoing activities with the new strategy and ensuing actions. In this process it is crucial to determine what is not part of the strategic work, showing that this form of coupling is also a form of decoupling. Moreover, the approach of focusing on shared challenges sometimes resulted in tension between the greater societal values and the narrower focus of the organizations (Burns and Jollands 2020). In this study, this tension was evident in two ways. First, as a housing actor, Framtiden Group by law had to behave in a “business-like” way. In this early phase and given the more abstract notions articulated in the strategic document, this was not seen as an issue, though it might be in the future. Second, there was also tension between the ongoing preexisting activities and the sudden reinterpretation of them as part of the overall new strategy, with some even arguing that this reinterpretation might be counterproductive. Here, the strategifying focused on extending relationships in different ways, through establishing and/or formalizing collaborations across boundaries. This led to strategizing, as these new collaborators had to act together, for example, by coming up with shared action plans.

The strategifying also entailed extending the internal organizational boundaries through hiring people with professions not previously represented in the municipal housing corporations. This extended the range of actions that could be taken and, accordingly, also had implications for what was considered strategic. For example, rather than providing more financial support for the school, these corporations would hire individuals to work “in house” on school issues. The consequences of this approach will emerge in the future, but this begs the question of whether the municipal housing corporations must become more similar to their collaboration partners to be able to make informed choices. Moreover, framing the strategic aspirations, through cognitive coupling, as shared and for the common good also affects the relational coupling by inviting people to join and extend the network. This could arguably illustrate the link between strategic management and governance (Klijn and Koppenjan 2020).

Material coupling

Material coupling, as part of the strategifying, was both challenging and easy because it is the Police Authority that will ultimately decide whether the strategic work is a success. This made the notion of doing “everything we can” good enough from a top-level perspective, while simultaneously proving to be a challenge because the people doing the actual work requested guidance on prioritizing. The risk here is that this could lead to the projectification of actions targeting the neighborhoods: in other words, there is a risk that strategifying based on the notion of the common good will not be especially useful when it comes to what actions to take. The material coupling also led to intensified discussions of how to measure and assess progress toward the goal.

The three types of couplings together imply a risk that the organizations will eventually experience mission drift, i.e., their actions will diverge from their original aims (Bousalham and Vidaillet 2018; Brorström and Styhre 2021). This drift might not be an issue in practice, but rather something that happens during the strategifying work, as new relationships are formed and new intentions are developed and concretized. However, this drift might lead the municipal housing corporations to assume tasks outside their responsibility, described above under relational coupling. This could become a problem, as it might imply difficulties determining who is responsible, for example, if goals are not achieved. The three strategifying efforts thus overlap, and we argue that at this early phase of the strategifying, accountability coupling could also be observed. This refers to a shift in accountability when problems are shared and no one is in charge (Crosby and Bryson 2005), making the municipal housing corporations assume responsibilities not previously theirs.

The considerable money invested put pressure on other actors to act and to adopt similar goals. Money might be a good way to get things started and to empower employees, but getting the residents of these neighborhoods involved is also crucial. In this, the top–down approach is not working, as it could mask what is already happening. Balancing control over events with openness to bottom–up activities is one challenge to be addressed in the near future that will require intensified strategifying work.

Conclusions

This article contributes to previous research into strategic practices targeting common challenges by showing how strategizing and strategifying regarding a grand challenge (Bryson et al. 2017; Crosby, ‘t Hart, and Torfing 2017) play out in practice. The study highlights that adopting a strategic approach permits various actions and accommodates various challenges. This means that both strategifying and strategizing work are needed. We show how the strategifying work was initially crucial, as the studied challenges were situated between organizations. The study shows how an attempt to address a common challenge put pressure not only on the organization adopting the strategic document, but also on other organizations. This is the key to addressing shared challenges, and it makes the situation more complex and requires more strategifying work—in all forms.

We confirm the three types of couplings identified by Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian (2018). However, we also found that strategifying in the present case, in a public context and when the challenge was shared, took other forms as well. The studied strategifying work aimed at fostering an understanding of the larger system and of how problems and solutions were connected, although this was at least initially framed as all actions being good actions. The connection between strategifying and strategizing was illustrated by how the new strategic intentions resulted in new organizational solutions and strengthened collaboration networks. These attempts to address the common good created tensions (Burns and Jollands 2020), however, as someone naturally had to lead or others might feel a lack of control. In the short run, this might lead to an absence of strategizing—i.e., a lack of action due to the new strategy. We discussed how this ultimately resulted in the decoupling of accountabilities, meaning that actions were conducted by one actor, while responsibility for them resided with another. This shift of responsibilities and accountabilities was thus a form of strategifying that could be said to include elements of the other three forms of coupling identified by Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian (2018); it might also be regarded as a specific form necessary in shared strategies for the common good (Crosby and Bryson 2005). We call this accountability coupling, which is work to create accountability within and across organizations. As new relationships and new professions were employed, this became a challenge in the studied case.

This article contributes to the literature on public strategic management by adding the strategifying concept to the discussion of strategizing and strategy implementation and of how actors “do” strategies in the public sector (George 2017). We illustrate how strategifying work interacts with, proceeds, and can be seen as a specific form of strategizing practices as it is a means to develop new capabilities. This advances debate on the link between strategies and performance by highlighting strategifying as an important part of strategic work and as a way of mediating shared strategic intentions (Elbanna, Andrews, and Pollanen 2016). We also build knowledge of the importance of middle managers and others for implementing strategic intentions, and of strategy as not something done solely at a top-management level (Balogun, Best, and Lê 2015; Balogun and Johnson 2004; Begkos, Llewellyn, and Walshe 2020).

The strategifying concept sheds light on the need to shift the boundaries of what is considered strategic both within large public organizations, in order to see the need to act “on the ground,” and across organizational boundaries regarding issues that no one is in charge of (Bryson and Crosby and Bryson 2005). In this way, strategifying enables strategizing about complex issues. Yet, strategifying might at times slow down further strategizing: if it is not clear that all parties must share responsibility, some actors might back off rather than step forward. If that happens, strategifying might again intensify, meaning that both strategizing and strategifying are constantly present. When a strategy is framed as for the common good, and responsibility is situated between organizations, there is a great need for strategifying work to shift boundaries and make organizations share responsibilities.

Future studies should focus more specifically on the challenge of upholding short-term practices while ensuring that common long-term goals are not ignored (Moldavanova and Goerdel 2018; Osborne et al. 2014, 2015). This challenge illustrates the importance of material coupling in practice (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018), to know whether everyday actions are really moving the organization toward the common goal.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara Brorström

Sara Brorström is since 2018 associate professor in Management and Organization at Department of Business Administration, School of Business, Economics, and Law, University of Gothenburg. Brorström has since she defended her PhD in Public Administration, ethnographically studied city planning processes, city strategy making, public sector innovations and collaborative work between public and private organizations. Brorström has, among others, published articles on public sector strategies, city sustainability, calculative practices in strategy making and collaborations over internal and external boundaries.

Alexander Styhre

Alexander Styhre is, since 2010, chair of Management and Organization, School of Business, Economics, and Law, University of Gothenburg. In 2006, Styhre was appointed professor in project management at Department of Technology Management, Chalmers University of Technology, and from 2008, chair of Operations Management at Chalmers. Styhre has published extensively about construction industry and in management studies more widely. Styhre is the former editor of Scandinavian Journal of Management and is currently on the editorial board of e.g., Academy of Management Review, and Organization Studies.

Notes

1 AB Framtiden translates to “The Future Corp.”

2 A business improvement district (BID) is a form of collaboration between various public and private actors in a neighborhood.

3 Zlatan Ibrahimović, a Swedish soccer player currently playing for AC Milan, grew up in a vulnerable area in Malmö, Sweden.