From exemplary practitioners to urban chameleons? The role of the citizen in the redistribution of tasks in local governance

ABSTRACT

This article further theorizes exemplary practitioners’ roles in neighborhood governance by building on the framework of the four ideal types of practitioners—frontline worker, everyday fixer, social entrepreneur and boundary spanner. An actor-focused approach was applied which delivered data to reconstruct processes in which a single citizen practitioner engaged in an Amsterdam neighborhood. Data were collected through shadowing and interviewing him for 2 months. It is shown how this exemplary practitioner combined and switched between the role characteristics of the four generic types, just like chameleon, during his interactions with other actors in various situations and contexts. During this dynamic role switching, he took on the tasks of a community developer, previously delivered by civil servants. He also facilitated stakeholder collaboration leading to more inclusive and democratic local governance. However, role switching caused him to loose the trust of some citizens on the long term. These findings gain relevance in the context of the reorganization of the Dutch welfare state.

KEYWORDS:

• Exemplary practitioner
• urban chameleon
• shadowing
• neighborhood
• governance
• community development

Introduction

With the recent decentralization of the welfare to the municipal levels and area-based, territorialized participatory policymaking in the Netherlands, local actors often need to work together to solve complex social issues, such as youth work or elderly care (De Wilde, Hurenkamp, and Tonkens 2014; Trommel 2013). In this new constellation of actors, organizational boundaries between governmental, professional and civic organizations and differences in these stakeholders’ mindsets become increasingly visible. In the same time, public, private and community roles, responsibilities and practices blend (De Wilde, Hurenkamp, and Tonkens 2014). This intermingling not only manifests in hybridized forms of governance but also produces new actors that mediate and create bridges between stakeholders. These new actors’ relevance reflects in the recent shift in research from good practices, innovative institutional arrangements or network management that make a difference (e.g. Fung and Wright 2003; Keast et al. 2004) to the significance of individuals in governance networks who make a difference (see Becher 2010; Durose et al. 2015; Van den Brink et al. 2012; Van der Pennen and van Bortel 2016; Van Hulst, De Graaf, and Van den Brink 2011, 2011; Van Meerkerk and Edelenbos 2014).

The role of ideal typical exemplary practitioners in Dutch neighborhoods was extensively explored in the studies of Van den Brink et al. (2012) and his colleagues (De Graaf, van Hulst, and Michels 2015; Van der Pennen and van Bortel 2016; Van Hulst, De Graaf, and Van den Brink 2011, 2011). Through an iterative research process between literature study and empirics, researchers created a typology of exemplary practitioners, consisting of four generic types: the frontline worker, the everyday fixer, the social entrepreneur and the boundary spanner (Van den Brink et al. 2012; Van Hulst, De Graaf, and Van den Brink 2011; Van der Pennen and van Bortel 2016).

In an earlier contribution to this journal Van Hulst, De Graaf, and Van den Brink (2011) showed that exemplary practitioners might fit into more than one profile. Later, it was shown that they indeed take on various characteristics of the four types depending on their personality traits and the given situation (Van der Pennen and Van Bortel 2016). Moreover, Durose et al. (2015, 584) suggested that practitioners’ types are rather fluid, and might ‘work differently in different roles or evolve and reconfigure their repertoire of practice over time’.

The current article aims to enrich the theoretical understanding of exemplary practitioners’ work by further developing these insights on two grounds. First, so far the authors have stated that the portrayed actors combined characteristics from the four generic types, which implies that these characteristics and skills reflect four types of roles individuals perform rather than discrete types of practitioners. Second, despite concluding that role switching occurred, the authors focused mainly on the intermingling of characteristics within two individuals, giving less analytic attention to the dynamics of role switching each person performed in various situations. Thus, I aim to shift the analytical focus. Instead of looking at how discrete actors belong to one type or many simultaneously, I study the dynamics and complexity of role switching through the work processes of one actor.

Because social interaction is the backbone of practitioners’ work (Van Hulst, De Graaf, and Van den Brink 2011), their everyday practices are seen as a set of actions being performed in interactions with others. Taking not only the individual but also the relationships one engages in as the units of analysis, on the one, and extending the sample in time to 2 months, on the other (see McDonald 2005), made it possible to document a whole variety of work processes in which our practitioner engaged in. Understanding the dynamics of these interactions and everyday practices lead to further insights on practitioners’ role in neighborhood governance. Moreover, this analytical focus could serve as an ‘everyday world’ analysis of how policies affect practitioners as policy targets (Naples 1998).

I studied the role switching dynamic and its situational character by zooming into the everyday practices of Arvin,¹ a citizen practitioner who works and lives in the Indische neighborhood in Amsterdam. Using a single case suggests that this study does not aim to generalize these insights. Instead, it aims to use those insights to potentially revise, enrich and extend the empirical content of the established typology by revealing mechanisms of a practitioner’s operation. To this end, the existing research on the generic types provides the conceptual building blocks.

In the following sections, after describing the research methodology, I describe the four generic types. I use these as a cursory framework for examining the roles Arvin performs in his everyday work in the empirical part, wherein I introduce his position and embeddedness in his neighborhood first. Second, I categorize Arvin’s activities according to what meeting types with what stakeholder groups he engages in, what roles he plays on these occasions and how he plays those roles. Third, I illustrate the practitioner’s ‘chameleon-like nature’ through the organizing process of the neighborhood gala he initiated. Fourth, I reflect on the evolution of Arvin’s role beyond the shadowing period. Finally, I conclude and discuss the findings and their theoretical implications in light of existing research.

Methodology

The study’s goal was to grasp everyday dynamics and work processes, and to that end, data collection by means of ethnographic fieldwork took place (see Van Hulst 2008). Specifically, the researcher shadowed the respondent, entailing that the researcher closely followed a respondent over an extended period of time, which allows observations of the respondent’s accounts and opinions (McDonald 2005). Moreover, shadowing provided situational data in the form of contextualized actions; thus, I focused on how Arvin did what he was talking about, and with what purpose and meaning (McDonald 2005), as well as on his interactions with others. Because the sample was collected over 2 months, I could reconstruct both the shape of Arvin’s days and his role in local governance processes during this timeslot. This made it possible to reconstruct work-in-process during the neighborhood gala from the beginning until the end, which I use to illustrate the dynamics of role switching.

The shadowing took place in February and March 2014 and involved 21 shadowing days. Shadowing sessions ranged from 1 h to about 12 h per day, depending on when Arvin was working ‘in and about’ the neighborhood and on the researcher’s availability. Some days Arvin worked as a project leader in another neighborhood and was therefore not shadowed. However, he was shadowed outside the neighborhood when attending events related to his work in the neighborhood.

I attended 36 scheduled meetings—varying in length from an hour to a whole day—as well as other events with the participant. Scheduled meetings included various citizens’ meetings and meetings between citizens, neighborhood professionals and municipality officials to discuss local issues, set up citizen initiatives and implement policy. With Arvin’s introduction, my access to these meetings was easily granted, which is telling of his established local legitimacy and engagement. Because shadowing was part of the orientating phase of a larger ethnographic research project conducted between 2013 and 2016, I usually took the role of the overt observer rather than the role of the active participant (O’Reilly 2008).

Data also emerged during numerous encounters² between meetings, such as walking from site to site or taking a lunch break. In between meetings, he often bumped into people, or he discussed previous meetings and his intentions and goals regarding upcoming events with me. Data from the larger project involving other local actors also informed this study, which allowed the gathering of evidence on Arvin’s role beyond the shadowing period.

Meetings were digitally recorded and transcribed. Where recording was not possible due to the event’s scale or because it would be disturbing in the given social situation, field notes were taken. Then data were grouped according to interactions with stakeholder groups, with the expectation that role display would show patterns per stakeholder group. Then data were analyzed interpretatively by assigning descriptive codes to Arvin’s actions and interactions (e.g. ‘clapping shoulders—enthusing’) and his attitudes and accounts (e.g. ‘human rights—ideology’). These code sets were read against the characteristics and the activities of the four general types and regrouped again when necessary. At this point, it became obvious that there is no correlation between displayed role characteristics and interaction with stakeholder types; however, new patterns emerged along types of meetings per stakeholder group. As the analysis unfolded Arvin’s empowering function became prevalent, and his activities were read against community development roles as described by Toomey (2011). Moreover, the author’s return to the field in 2015 and 2016 revealed a contrast with Arvin’s attitude and activities in neighborhood governance before, which allowed to conclude on his evolving role over time.

Exemplary practitioners: four types, four roles

Exemplary practitioners combine two characteristics simultaneously—social engagement and entrepreneurship. Both are specifically needed for practitioners’ work in disadvantaged neighborhoods (Van den Brink et al. 2012). Social engagement refers to how exemplary practitioners are empathetic and are capable of building trust and social relations (subjective element) and to how they have strong networking skills, have access to multiple social domains, and can build alliances between the system world and life world (objective element). Their entrepreneurialism is reflected in their ability to inspire, to demonstrate leadership skills and to have a clear vision, the willingness to take risks and openness (subjective element) as well as in their being results oriented (objective element) (Van den Brink et al. 2012; Van der Pennen and van Bortel 2016). These characteristics were used to generate the four distinct types of practitioners: the frontline worker, the everyday fixer, the social entrepreneur and the boundary spanner (see Table 1). I operationalize these four types in this study as the four roles the practitioner can perform, each corresponding with particular activities, characteristics and skillsets.

Table 1. The four types of exemplary practitioners, as described in the literature (Van den Brink et al. 2012; Van der Pennen and van Bortel 2016; Van Hulst, De Graaf, and Van den Brink 2011).

	Everyday fixer	Frontline worker	Social entrepreneur	Boundary spanner
Characteristics, skills and attitude toward problems	Many social ties Enthusiastic, results-oriented go-getter Has pragmatic instead of ideological motives Relatively high degree of autonomy Innovative, creative: avers (and breaks) rules and procedures Self-confident, steadfast, own vision	Empathy, interpersonal and relational skills, listening, Strong (normative) social engagement Networking skills Reflection-in-action: improvizing skills in relation to specific problems Results-oriented	Strong network in the system, active in the life world Idealistic motives High autonomy Innovative Complex problem = challenge Steadfast, own vision Empathetic, interpersonal skills	Extended knowledge of both the system and the life world: few but strong ties Strong objective and subjective social engagement Interpersonal and relational skills (‘multilingual’) Empathy and active listening
Activities/role in solving problems	Informal leader: builds strong personal relations with local community, listens, motivates and enthuses Moves between system and life worlds Partners with the system Starts up a project then leaves	Creates a bridge toward the citizenry by building strong relationships with and helping citizens in bureaucratic procedures Goes the extra mile in persuading bosses, bending rules to reach results Acts on the spot (reflection- in-action) Matches policy objectives with community priorities	Recognizes and creates opportunities for communities Seeks out and applies unconventional resources for initiatives Deconstructs, analyzes and solves problems with an innovative twist Gets things done to gain trust	Creates bridges and multiactor networks across distinct domains, matches initiatives Builds trust Facilitates communication: ‘Translates’ and mediates between distinct parties Troubleshoots when conflicts arise

Besides social engagement and an entrepreneurial approach, these actors’ main characteristic is their extensive knowledge of local conditions and ‘holistic problem orientation’, which allows them to prioritize the complex and interrelated neighborhood problems (Van der Pennen and van Bortel 2016; Van Hulst, De Graaf, and Van den Brink 2011). They do so by operating and transcending the organizational and domain boundaries characterized by relational tensions (see Figure 1). On the one hand, vertical tension exists between the state level of governmental administration, policymaking and politics and the local interests of citizens and implementing local organizations. On the other hand, horizontal tension exists between the principles, values and ideals of the citizenry and the political apparatus, and the procedures, rules and laws created to protect those ideals. The two axes create four domains wherein practitioners operate, leading to Habermas’ robust analytical division between the life world (in gray) of informal personal relations, values and emotions and the system (no fill color) of hierarchies, procedures and laws. System versus life world differences and tensions show in the following characteristics: a focus on rules and procedures versus informal contacts and personal relations; rational procedures versus feelings and values; paid labor versus volunteering; hierarchical organization versus flat organizational structures; being results oriented versus being process oriented and willing to experiment (Smets 2012; Van den Brink et al. 2012).

Figure 1. The four domains wherein exemplary practitioners operate.

Van den Brink et al. (2012) categorize the four practitioner types by their situatedness in these four domains, which is relevant to the interactions that the current study’s practitioner had with various stakeholder groups. Practitioners in the frontline worker role are always employed at governmental or welfare organizations; they are, for example police officers and social workers. They juggle between their organizational goals and citizens’ interests. Practitioners in the social entrepreneur role connect local professional organizations with the citizenry. These life-world actors are sometimes hired by the system and must consider the system’s routines. The everyday fixer’s role is relatively more autonomous than the social entrepreneur’s. These practitioners feel most at home in the life world; they are most likely, but not necessarily, active residents. Practitioners in the boundary spanner role do not necessarily prefer or originate from a particular domain, but because they are skilled at alleviating tensions across different views and groups, they are placed at the four domains’ nexus (Van den Brink et al. 2012).

Practitioner’s situatedness shows that their work has a political aspect manifesting in efforts to redistribute resources and empower localities in a different way (see Van Hulst, De Graaf and Van den Brink 2012). Moreover, these categorizations suggest (Van den Brink et al. 2012), that Arvin, as a citizen, acts in either the everyday fixer or social entrepreneur role—someone who operates in the life world, while also partnering up with the system. However, the current study assumed, and in the coming session confirms, that Arvin has multiple roles in multiple domains.

A citizen making a difference

‘From the top to the bottom, I am there a little bit everywhere’

The Indische neighborhood, where our practitioner operates, is a multicultural, gentrifying neighborhood in Amsterdam East. In 2007, the neighborhood was listed among the 40 most disadvantaged Dutch neighborhoods, and it became the target of an area-based social and infrastructural revitalization policy. Thorough the years, the neighborhood has become a pioneering example of citizen participation.

Arvin, our practitioner, had a large role in this process due to his early engagement in neighborhood development. Now in his fifties, he arrived in the Netherlands more than 20 years ago as an Iranian political refugee. After finishing his studies in informatics, being interested in social issues, he climbed the organizational ladder at various Dutch municipalities. In his final years as a civil servant for the municipality of Amsterdam, he directed hundreds of policy officials. At some point, he found:

This is nothing for me … because the higher you are in the system, the less significance you have. Your work doesn’t have a meaning. It’s all about abstraction, nonsense and signing documents.

Arvin was clearly motivated to make a difference by doing, which underpins his pragmatic but ideological attitude toward neighborhood problems. Based on this account, Arvin bears the characteristics of both an everyday fixer (pragmatic) and a social entrepreneur (idealistic). In 2001, Arvin quit his job so he could concentrate on his neighborhood. Since then, he has initiated and facilitated many projects, as well as cofounded the first neighborhood community organization. He put a lot of ‘passion hours’ into his work as a volunteer, but he also worked as an entrepreneur in and beyond neighborhood projects. Through the years, he has built up a considerable local network extending to both local institutions and residents. His connectedness to various domains and stakeholders and his expertise on local issues can be related to his ‘free role’ in the neighborhood. He says,

I am just an active citizen. (…) What I do now, I could never do as an official. I am operating on all levels, from the top to the bottom. A job like that does not exist (…) wherein you know everything, everything about social care, about education, the government, building management, homeless sheltering, youth and so on. I also have to be able to make vertical connections. And I must have confidence in doing it. In [a formal organization] I could never tell my boss and his superior, ‘you are idiots, because you do not talk to each other’. But now, I can speak out. And they can be angry, sad or happy to hear that, but it does not have any consequences for me.

The account above shows that Arvin attributes a relatively high degree of autonomy to his role and finds that autonomy of great significance, bearing the characteristic of everyday fixers. During the fieldwork, it became clear that Arvin did not shy away from criticizing and confronting system actors on their work methods, which characterizes both everyday fixers and frontline workers. Moreover, Arvin was as comfortable talking to local politicians as to the local Moroccan elderly club’s members. This shows his social engagement being wide on both objective and subjective scales: he has a strong network within and beyond the neighborhood across various domains, ranging from citizen groups to council members, which corresponds with the boundary spanner role.

Arvin’s days were filled with usually hour-long meetings. He sometimes worked from 9 am to 8 pm and often worked weekends. He crisscrossed the neighborhood throughout the day, visiting local initiatives, welfare organizations or municipal officials, or he invited them to the community center. Arvin’s dynamism and ambition is reflected in his almost fulltime schedule, which features the everyday fixer. The freedom of his schedule, within and outside of traditional office hours, makes it possible for him to be ‘everywhere’, which helps him in generating trust among stakeholders and in creating a great body of local knowledge.

Moreover, Arvin applies an entrepreneurial approach to what he does:

I get a lot of information. In the end, I am an opportunist who recognizes patterns in the chaos…and I juggle with the promising patterns. I rely on my intuition. I am fishing in the muddy waters. The muddier the water, the better… I do not have a checklist. But if you mess around on the same field for more than ten years, then you have a skilled intuition…and I also take a lot of risks.

This quote features a social entrepreneur: someone who is attracted to challenges and difficult problems (‘the muddier the better’), takes risks, brings together various resources and people, and develops unconventional solutions to difficult problems. However, what Arvin describes as ‘juggling with patterns’,—his spontaneous, in-situation ability to improvise and act on the spot—, is a feature of the frontline worker. Arvin thus features the characteristics of all four types of practitioner roles. Next, I look at how he capitalizes on his skills in interaction with various stakeholder groups.

Moving freely in a complex world

Encounters in the life-world

Life-world encounters refer to Arvin’s interactions with his fellow citizens. In general, Arvin was enthusiastic, and he formed warm, personal relationships with co-citizens, which relates to the everyday fixer role, dominated by the activities of an inspirational and informal leader. These encounters are classified into the four groups: on-the-go encounters (1), start-up meetings (2), matching meetings (3) and educational meetings (4).

First, outside of organized meetings, he often bumped into acquaintances on-the-go—on the street and during events. These encounters included warm welcomes, handshakes, shoulder claps, compliments and motivating words about each other’s projects and connection points. There were also short information exchanges, updates about on-going projects, and appointments were scheduled. It seemed liked everyone knew Arvin and whoever met him felt good about it. This mobilizing, informal leadership style is descriptive of the everyday fixer.

The second type of life-world meeting occurred with citizens who wanted to start up initiatives: Arvin was known as someone who can, in his words, ‘turn ideas into activities’ very fast. These meetings were sometimes first contacts. Arvin, just like a chameleon, simultaneously displayed and switched between different roles, adjusting his activities to the situation. In these meetings, first, he created a positive atmosphere for discussions, and then listened to his co-citizens’ ambitions and dreams, trying to learn about the other’s interests and drives. He could immediately estimate whether the initiator had enough vigor to follow through with the project (listening, reflection-in-action; frontline worker).

If an initiative had the potential to succeed, he would add his own innovative ideas to the discussion, challenging the initiator’s ambitions and encouraging her/him to dream bigger and wilder throughout the brainstorming. It seemed Arvin deliberately ignored—mostly financial—hindrances, saw a challenging opportunity in complex problems, showed indifference to risks, and concentrated on positives rather than negatives (innovative, recognizing opportunities, attracted to challenges; social entrepreneur). These ‘dream big’ sessions’ goal was to build enthusiasm and ‘good energy’ for starting up (everyday fixer) and embedding the initiative in the wider neighborhood agenda (frontline worker). He also identified and listed other initiatives that might participate or provide support (frontline worker), potential municipal projects to partake (frontline worker), unconventional resources—such as office furniture to be recycled—, or available venues for initiatives (social entrepreneur).

Toward the meeting’s end, when Arvin felt that the initiator had a strong sense of ownership and drive, he shared practical information on material or human resources that could move the project forward, or he made agreements about future steps (everyday fixer). The meeting’s last part always entailed education about how bureaucracy works, what stake future partners may have in the initiative or how subsidy proposals should be written (frontline worker).

Even in case he did not think a proposed initiative had the potential to be connected to formal organizations he did not said no. Instead, he encouraged the initiators to take small steps toward their goals or sent them to other initiators with whom they could pair up. When asked, he rejected the idea that he had decision-making power over the realization of initiatives. Rather, he said his judgment relied on the idea’s strength one came with: ‘You can mobilize many people around an idea. And that’s what I believe in’. Arvin said he had an ‘inner thermometer’—his intuition—on which he relied when judging whether an idea could be realized, whether enough participants could be found for it and whether the necessary financial support could be secured.

Still, inevitably, Arvin was a gatekeeper to various resources and key figures. On the one, gatekeeper position can be attributed to his independent role and it draws attention to questions of representation and to the importance of looking at the intentions and ideological considerations of exemplary practitioners and boundary spanners. On the other, his capability of making real-time decisions in these situations showcases his ‘trained intuition’ and extensive knowledge from long years’ experience, reflecting his skills as a social entrepreneur—taking and estimating risks—and as an everyday fixer—estimating whether a project he starts up has the potential to take off the ground.

The third type of life-world meetings were to match initiators of various backgrounds and resources, where he displayed the social entrepreneur’s, the everyday fixer’s and the boundary spanner’s characteristics simultaneously. For example, he organized a meeting between volunteers from a traditional Dutch association of an old, badly maintained playground and a Moroccan-Dutch initiator who needed a location for his summer chess camp for neighborhood children (matching resources creatively; social entrepreneur). The camp created an opportunity for Arvin to ask the municipality to refurbish and revive the playground and after that he left the project (everyday fixer).

His social entrepreneur role intermingled with his boundary spanner role in that he not only matched resources but also created a bridge between distant societal groups. The latter finding indicates the extension of the notion of the boundary spanner role beyond connecting the system and the life world to connecting citizens across ethnic and religious differences.

The following quote illustrates his simultaneous roles:

I know who needs to sit by whom at the table at a given moment (…) just doing that makes people happy. I do not need to do more. Then I let it go and I go do something else. (…) I connect people (…) based on how far individuals are in their process and whether they are ready to meet someone or not.

In the final meeting type, Arvin acted as an educator who not only taught about practicalities but also challenged people to become aware of their own capabilities. As do many exemplary practitioners, Arvin had supporters who helped with administrative and organizational tasks (see Van Hulst, De Graaf, and Van den Brink 2011). During this study, one citizen helped him in administration, applied for subsidies for common projects and functioned as a project leader in one of his initiatives. They had regular preparatory meetings for negotiating with the municipality, where Arvin taught her concrete techniques and tricks about how to write subsidy requests and how to negotiate with actors in bureaucracies (frontline worker). He also taught her about how to lead a project, and he incrementally delegated project leadership to her then left (everyday fixer). Here, the emphasis was clearly on this fellow citizen’s empowerment and transmitting skills.

These findings on everyday practices and processes in life-world meetings highlight Arvin’s empowering function, characteristic of community developers. Community building includes activation and building communal social capital and grassroots capacity among communities (Purdue 2001). Indeed, building social capital is considered community development’s basis as a community departs from one-to-one relationships between actors who trust each other and have mutual interests (Traynor 2007, 216), two notions on which Arvin builds so strongly in his everyday interactions. Arvin’s role characteristics, and thus that of exemplary practitioners, overlap with four community developer roles that Toomey (2011) describes as being oriented toward empowerment.

First, Arvin’s description as an inspirational leader (everyday fixer) role corresponds with the ally’s role, someone who shows respect and solidarity while engaging in collective efforts to create communities (Toomey 2011). Toomey’s catalyst role also corresponds with the everyday fixer role, wherein the practitioner ‘gets the ball rolling’—sparks action in a particular direction—and then leaves. Second, Arvin’s bringing different people together, including the marginalized (boundary spanner) and facilitating brainstorming activities (social entrepreneur) fits into Toomey’s (2011) description of a facilitator. Finally, Arvin performed the educator role (frontline worker and everyday fixer), which is identical to the liberator role (in a pedagogical sense) in community development (Toomey 2011). The overlap between the four generic types and community developer accentuates Arvin’s capability to make a difference by empowering communities in his neighborhood. Ultimately, Arvin as a citizen fills a community development professional’s function (opbouwerker), someone usually employed by the Dutch welfare state.

Encounters in the system

These encounters refer to contacts with the representatives of the system: politicians, municipality officials or local institutions’ employees. In maintaining these contacts, Arvin relied on his knowledge of how the system works, which he had learned through his previous positions at formal organizations. He has gained ‘pockets of trust’ (Keast et al. 2004) in local organizations due to his long-time engagement in the neighborhood. ‘I am the last Mohican in the sense that I am the only one who still hangs around for years in spite of not being paid’, he said.

Arvin functioned as an influential expert on local participation and a legitimate negotiating partner, whose critique is accepted among system actors. His suggestions, as he says, are ‘common sense, (…) I am not talking out of the blue’. His unconventional and innovative approach to solving problems is attractive to the system actors in a policy environment where experimentation is key. These attitudes characterize the social entrepreneur (unconventional, challenging) and everyday fixer (critical, innovative, own vision) roles.

System encounters consisted of information rich and strategic encounters. First, information rich encounters, occurring both on-the-go or on appointments, were aimed at information exchange. He both shared information with system actors on the progress of citizen initiatives and collected information on new or on-going institutional opportunities. Arvin often had appointments with officials where they exchanged information on a variety of topics. But even in more structured meetings with a central theme, he always exchanged additional information at the end.

One of his trusted ally was the neighborhood’s participation broker.³ Arvin checked in with him everyday via telephone, between meetings or at the end of the day, providing updates about actualities. Partnering with an official put Arvin in the everyday fixer role. Nevertheless, capitalizing on up-to-date knowledge is a general feature of exemplary practitioners (Van den Brink et al. 2012). Information rich encounters exemplified how he built his extensive local knowledge, which he would utilize in various other roles and situations. For example he would share his knowledge on initiatives he gained during life-world meetings, and he would gain knowledge on governmental resources and opportunities during system meetings; two sorts of information he would create a synergy of in his boundary spanner role.

The second meeting type with system actors, strategic encounters refer to lobbying, negotiating and arranging resources for initiatives. During the shadowing period, I did not participate in meetings where Arvin was the only citizen, but in meetings where both he and his assistant were present. During these meetings and other participant observations, after or before meetings, it became apparent, how he ‘massaged’ (his own words) conversation partners to advise them about certain initiatives and issues. His gatekeeper role comes here to the fore as he advised in favor of some and against other initiatives.

Arvin made clear how the endorsed community goals fit into policy goals and challenged taken-for-granted assumptions of the bureaucratic logic (frontline worker). He also made system actors curious and enthusiastic on endorsed initiatives (everyday fixer). Once he gained support from someone in a significant position, Arvin used that person as a selling point to get other system actors on board, and gained institutional and political support incrementally (everyday fixer).

Collaborative encounters

Collaborative encounters aimed to connect system representatives with citizens and their initiatives, as well as other stakeholders that would normally not meet each other. Arvin’s community building role is prevalent in collaborative meetings: to build initial trust, some of these meetings were organized in the context of eating and drinking together. While these characteristics fit best the boundary spanner role, he also displayed other role characteristics during meetings.

The first type, protégée encounters, is comparable to life-world matching meetings, where Arvin introduced distant actors (boundary spanner or catalyst) and matched resources (social entrepreneur). He often started the project up then left execution to the connected parties (everyday fixer or catalyst). For instance, he connected the citizens involved in the playground project to the official responsible for neighborhood regeneration, and then he left.

The second meeting types, strategic meetings were meant to build long-term alliances and structurally change collaboration among neighborhood parties. They were important occasions for building trust among distinct stakeholders, for putting differences on the table and aligning seemingly conflicting interests.

Such strategic meeting was that of the ‘Participation Support Team’, connected by Arvin. The team consisted of professionals, the municipality’s participation broker, local entrepreneurs and other citizens. Arvin facilitated a series of meetings on how local institutions support initiatives with the goal of finding service gaps and oversupply cases to optimize both the citizen support infrastructure and the distribution of tasks among stakeholders. For example, questions arose such as what types of societal groups are supported by which organization and which groups are neglected.

While facilitating, the processes of transaction, mutual understanding and smooth communication among different parties were his priority. Arvin kicked off the first meeting with generating an open attitude and establishing the common goal, by starting with a question round: ‘Who are you? What does the neighborhood mean to you? What can you mean for the neighborhood?’ These questions, regardless of the answers, were to establish a sense of commitment and to identify common goals. This simple technique created a feeling of ownership of the common cause and a sphere of shared responsibility (Ghorashi 2014), which contributed toward the forming of an autonomous group that reaches a sense of collective creativity and come together for a common goal (see Keast et al. 2004).

In spite of establishing the notion of commonality, conflicting interests and differences were not spoken out. A tense atmosphere and feelings of uselessness developed among the professionals after it became clear that many of them deliver the same service but without significant results in supporting initiatives. Professionals felt threatened in their positions because they all were members of organizations competing for scarce governmental subsidies, and now, the citizenry aspired to have their share. Arvin also pushed an agenda in which he emphasized that, in order to optimize the supporting infrastructure, organizations had to change their internal workings. This generated a defensive attitude among professionals as their working methods, their roles and their organizational structures in which their daily work lives embedded were questioned. This underlying group dynamic hindered the groups’ ability to engage with the content of the meeting and working toward the common goal.

Arvin recognized this dynamic and handled it by confronting participants. He made it clear that talking negatively about each other when back at their respective organizations does not help the collaboration, which put participants into an unusual, vulnerable position. But he also emphasized that stakeholders cannot do without each other in local governance, which generated a humble attitude. Participants opened up and started to discuss about their differences, interests and insecurities. Stories were shared and time was taken to find out about each other’s underlying wishes, needs and fears. When they returned to discussing possible future scenarios on citizen support, they realized things might change for them, but no one is going to lose their jobs.

Arvin, upon recognizing the underlying group dynamics, created chaos first (his own words) by disrupting participants’ original positions, which created space for settling differences. Everyone could speak out which created a new sense of order based on changed positions and brought the interaction to a higher level, one that was no longer dominated by individual organizational interests but by the common goal. According to Ghorashi (2014), the time-out, or delayed interspaces created when people share narratives from different positions enables individuals to get out of their comfort zones, negotiate those positions and develop new forms of citizenship based on connections.

Arvin initiated the tensions, but he addressed participants’ concerns by making these sites of contestation visible, which shows his ability to reflect-in-action, characteristic of a frontline worker. Moreover, he applied his listening and troubleshooting skills, characteristics of a boundary spanner. In community development terms, he played the facilitator role, bringing different parties together (Toomey 2011).

The case of the neighborhood gala

Arvin’s chameleon nature and everyday impact can be better understood by tracing his role switching thorough one whole project. In 2014, while busy with initiatives regarding youth and talent development in the neighborhood, Arvin found there was a group of children who could not afford to play musical instruments. He got the idea of organizing a crowdfunding gala, where local institutions and entrepreneurs could create funds to finance music lessons for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Local community art groups, music groups and local catering start-ups would secure the event’s activities. Here, an innovative idea was born, with a plan to exploit unconventional resources (social entrepreneur) to solve a local problem not addressed by local services (frontline worker), which involved bundling various distinct domains to reach a goal together (boundary spanner).

Shortly after coming up with the idea, Arvin started a whispering campaign, spreading it to various groups and key figures during his life-world, system and collaborative encounters in the neighborhood. The more people welcomed the idea, the more he mentioned the gala at each meeting he participated in (activating; everyday fixer), without mentioning concrete details. The enthusiasm grew to the point that on a system meeting, a housing corporation’s director asked him when the gala was going to happen. To which Arvin answered, ‘I would love to do it, but we need people and project leaders who would do it. I have the idea; I know what needs to happen’. During this meeting he negotiated two contacts from the municipality who would support the project within the city district (system meeting, fixing resources; social entrepreneur). Moreover, on a later protégée meeting he introduced the project leader he had in mind and had previously asked to join the project (life-world meeting; activating; the everyday fixer). He also involved the municipality’s participation broker, who could arrange a venue (system meeting; enthusing, fixing resources; everyday fixer and social entrepreneur). Finally, he brought all these participants together for a collaborative meeting, where they set up the project team (boundary spanner).

The project team created a budget, which could be financed from the municipality’s participation funds. After the project was set up, Arvin became a board member of the project organization (starting up an initiative and letting it happen; everyday fixer):

The gala is going to happen. And I have not much to do anymore. (…) But the project leaders, they still come to me and say, ‘I have to do this and that, and what do you think about it’. It’s more on the level of giving advice, and not on the level of giving instructions. Because I am not interested in how the gala is going to happen, as long as it’s going to happen.

The gala indeed got realized. Children received musical instruments from the proceeds. Additionally, the gala served as a networking event, where various stakeholders from the neighborhood from small-scale initiatives to council members to city elite met and established rapport on working together for a common goal. Local community groups and start-ups provided activities and services and expanded their networks. This resulted in further contractual relationships at later events, for example between municipality and ethnic caterers.

This case shows the process of how Arvin brought distant stakeholders together and achieved results by using his skills interchangeably, just like a chameleon, adapting his attitude and characteristics to what the situation requires. Arvin acted first as an everyday fixer or catalyst: he had an idea and mobilized others around it. His positions as an informal leader (ally) show in that during various separate life-world and system meetings, he first created enough enthusiasm and positive discourse about the gala among prospective participants. Once there was enough commitment for the work to begin, he connected the various participants (boundary spanner, facilitator) and possible resources (social entrepreneur, facilitator) of the collaboration. And finally, when the initiative started, Arvin withdrew into a supervisory role (everyday fixer, catalyst).

Beyond the heydays

Arvin enjoyed strong legitimacy both in system and life world settings during the shadowing period. However, subsequent ethnographic data revealed that, over time, he become more humble in his role as a community leader. His withdrawal from facilitating start-up meetings, matching meetings and protégée meetings by 2016 had to do with the fact that his growing influence in neighborhood governance incrementally undermined his legitimacy. Other residents, also competing for scarce municipal budgets, began to question his dominant role as a gatekeeper. Moreover, the neighborhood center he initiated was increasingly seen as monopolizing because he accommodated most of his protégée initiatives there.

While being critical and confronting to bureaucracies, Arvin inevitably represented policy interests during system meetings in the frontline worker role,—where he promoted and matched particular initiatives (and not others) with policy goals—and as a social entrepreneur where he partnered up and developed pockets of trust with officials. This contradicted with his role as a connecting leader and as a representative of his community. Nevertheless, Arvin’s legitimacy remained intact in system circles and he could still gain resources for the initiatives he started himself.

Arvin’s sensibility to step back and not to abuse his influence reinforces his image as intrinsic idealist and bottom-up community developer. Already in 2014, he himself admitted that leaders ‘also have a due date’, and that ‘we can not eat up our own children’, meaning that space should be given to other communities and leaders once one's role starts to extend beyond informal leadership and horizontal organizational forms in the neighborhood. He took distance from his role as a ‘community man’ (his own words) by leading a major project organized in other cities.

Conclusion and discussion

Our analysis showed that our practitioner switches among the everyday fixer, frontline worker, social entrepreneur and boundary spanner roles during his interactions (see Table 2). These are played out dynamically, which confirms previous assumptions on practitioners’ role fluidity (Durose et al. 2015). Just like chameleons adapt to their own environment, Arvin adapted his roles to situations and the context he partook during his everyday work life. Consequently, no patterns emerged in terms of interacting with specific stakeholder groups. Instead, we gained insights on the dynamics of Arvin’s role display.

Table 2. The four exemplary practitioner roles as displayed by Arvin.

Type encounter according to stakeholder group	Exemplary practitioner role/ [Community developer role]	Role activity
Life-world encounters
1. On-the-go encounters	Everyday fixer/informal leader [Ally]	Builds relationships with local community Enthuses/motivates
2. Startup meetings	Everyday fixer [Ally] [Catalyst]	Builds relationships Listens/enthuses Starts up then leaves
	Social entrepreneur	Recognizes opportunities Identifies and applies unconventional resources Estimating and taking risks
	Frontline worker [Liberator]	Listens/enthuses Reflects and reacts in action Matches policy with community goals Supports citizenry in bureaucratic procedures
3. Matching meetings	Boundary spanner [Facilitator]	Builds bridges
	Social entrepreneur	Matches resources Creates trust Facilitates
	Everyday fixer [Catalyst]	Starts up then leaves Moves between system and life world
4. Educational meetings	Frontline worker [Liberator]	Supports citizenry in bureaucratic tasks
	Everyday fixer [Catalyst]	Starts up then leaves
System encounters
1. Information rich encounters	Everyday fixer	Partners with the system
2. Strategic encounters	Frontline worker	Persuades system actors to bend rules Matches policy with community goals
Collaborative encounters
1. Protégée meetings	Boundary spanner [Facilitator]	Builds bridges
	Social entrepreneur	Matches resources Creates trust Facilitates
	Everyday fixer [Catalyst]	Starts up then leaves Moves between system and life worlds
2. Strategic meetings	Frontline worker	Reflects and acts on the spot
	Boundary spanner [Facilitator]	Builds bridges and trust Facilitates Troubleshoots

Arvin’s role as a community developer among the citizenry, stemming from his idealistic motives became prevalent during various meetings, and overlapped with the four roles of the conceptual framework of Van den Brink et al. (2012). His leadership manifested in empowering the citizenry and developing local communities by being an ally (everyday fixer) during on-the-go and start-up-meetings, a catalyst (everyday fixer) during all life-world meetings, a liberator (frontline worker) during start-up—and educational life-world meetings, and a facilitator (creating bridges between distant citizen groups) during matching life-world meetings. Arvin having connected ethnically and religiously diverse citizen groups during matching meetings infers that his boundary spanner role was not exclusive to system-life-world relations. This is significant as in Dutch disadvantaged multicultural neighborhoods, social cohesion, integration and the empowerment of the vulnerable are primary policy goals.

By taking upon these community development roles our volunteering citizen complemented the work of social work professionals, which underscores that stakeholder roles and responsibilities blend in local governance against the background of the reorganization of the Dutch welfare state (De Wilde, Hurenkamp, and Tonkens 2014). Community development in the Netherlands is usually understood as part of welfare state provisions, performed by professionals who work for governmental organizations, but are nevertheless under increasing bureaucratic and management pressure. Arvin’s free position as a citizen allowed him to experiment with innovative forms of social organization that complex local problems require.

Arvin’s community developer role extended to system-life-world relationships, as well. This finding enriches our understanding of how practitioners work in managing interdomain tensions in local governance. First, as a facilitator during both collaborative meeting types he contributed to the redistribution of tasks among local stakeholders in policy implementation. Next to booking these results, he facilitated a process whereby stakeholders of distinct organizational backgrounds and mindsets developed interpersonal competences and learned to collaborate. Second, he functioned as a catalyst during protégée meetings by initiating contact then leaving subsequent project implementation to the connected parties. His role as a community developer beyond citizen groups is significant, because solving complex local problems require the common efforts of ‘crafting communities’ consisting of a diverse set of stakeholders (Trommel 2013). Arvin’s leadership style, which is rather informal, facilitating and less autocratic, fulfills the requirements of local horizontal governance structures (Keast et al. 2004). This type of leadership represents unknown territory for professionals and government employees who operate in hierarchical organizational structures. The above findings shed light on the increasing importance of managing the dynamics of stakeholder relations, which signals the need for more process-oriented policy making. While local policy makers are mainly focused on policy content and booking results, they seem to overlook the dynamics of interaction and negotiations between the more established and the recently invited actors in local governance.

It has been previously speculated that the role of practitioners who make a difference might evolve over time (Durose et al. 2015), which was underpinned by this study. Arvin’s capacity as a connecting leader and as a representative of his community subsided over time because his role switching mitigated community trust and raised questions in terms of his legitimacy to represent the citizenry. His role as a gatekeeper of governmental resources became transparent and ambiguous among neighborhood residents; while he empowered some, others felt excluded (see Kovács, Smets, and Ghorashi 2019; Naples 1998). This finding resonates with the research of Becher (2010), who shows that intermediary practitioners need to face the dilemma of keeping their legitimacy while moving between the roles of being a representative of different stakeholders, a gatekeeper of particular resources and initiator of contact.

Channels of accountability, representation and legitimacy are not well developed in contemporary governance networks (Swyngedouw 2005). This, on the one, gives more room for practitioners to switch between roles, and book results effectively and swiftly. On the other, the complexity in which practitioners find themself might hinder them on the long term, just as Arvin lost community trust over time. This aspect of role switching also problematizes and further highlights practitioner’s political functions. It shows that, in an era when participatory measures are increasingly implemented with the goal to deepen local democracy, the deficits of transparency, legitimacy and accountability are as problematic in participatory forms of democracy as they are in representative democracy. Therefore, critical research focusing on power relationships as well as specific ideological motives and intentions of exemplary practitioners should explore their work’s effect on democratic governance.

In the author’s view, Arvin’s versatile navigating style is exceptional among exemplary practitioners. First, his past embeddeddness in the system combined with his enduring engagement in the neighborhood as an active citizen are to be accounted for his ability to engage both horizontally and vertically in local governance and switch between roles with ease. Second, due to this wide engagement Arvin gained extensive knowledge and experience on local participation. Him collecting and redistributing information stood out best during on-the-go, and educational life-world encounters, and information rich system encounters, nevertheless, information exchange was present on all encounter types. He booked concrete results in reaching policy and community goals by using that information as an input during start-up meetings and matching life-world meetings, strategic meetings with the system and during both collaborative meeting types. Finally, as repeatedly noted above, Arvin’s position as a citizen gave him enough freedom to experiment and bypass rules to which system actors are bounded.

Because of this exceptional position of Arvin, the study is limited in its insights but also opens up new questions. One might ask how autonomous other practitioners are in their capacity of role switching, and thus what is the relationship between various practitioners’ level of autonomy and role switching capacity. Another question is how the role switching and role evolution of exemplary practitioners plays out in other localities with their own specific problems and characteristics. Long-term, ethnographic research with a comparative focus conducted in multiple urban contexts should address this question.

Acknowledgments

I thank Peer Smets and Halleh Ghorashi from the Sociology Department of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam for comments  on previous versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zsuzsa Kovács

Zsuzsa Kovács is a graduate student in the Sociology Department of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her ethnographic research focuses on local stakeholder relationships and the development of communities in Amsterdam East. Study area: Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Notes

1. A pseudonym was used to protect the practitioner’s anonymity.

2. I use later the general term ‘encounters’ instead of ‘meetings’ to include interactions too that were not planned.

3. Participation brokers are municipal officials, whose broadly defined task is seeking and supporting initiatives.