NEW DEAL | Contractor at the municipality challenges the bureaucrat

Entrepreneurial skills are sought after in public organizations today. But entrepreneurs risk jeopardizing fundamental democratic values.

Public organizations are often associated with bureaucracy and top-down management. Ideals that originally come from big business. But over the past 20 years, a more entrepreneurial management logic has taken hold and now dominates parts of our municipal and regional operations. When political scientist Albin Algotson at Linköping University began his thesis to study how ten municipalities work with local development and attractiveness, the concept of entrepreneurship quickly emerged.

– Development practitioners are not top-down bureaucrats guided by politics, doing their work in a rule-driven way. They are entrepreneurs – working creatively, thinking in new ways, seeing opportunities and, not least, mobilizing to push through change projects. In this way, they differ from other parts of the public administration, says Albin Algotson.

Two trends are driving the entrepreneurial spirit

He says that over the past decade, two trends have driven the entrepreneurial spirit in municipal and regional organizations. One trend is projectification, which makes the way organizations work more project-like. Work is often clearly defined in terms of time and employees are given tasks that are increasingly similar to those of a project manager. They are expected to be creative, innovative, decisive and able to mobilize. And, of course, be able to drive projects forward and demonstrate results.

The second trend is that public administrations are working more cross-sectorally today than ten years ago. It has been discovered that many issues span several sectors. Growth issues and attractiveness are examples of this. In addition to business and growth issues, this area also includes spatial planning, education, licensing and social issues.

– You have to have people working across the board. And then we get lots of people who call themselves strategists, coordinators and coordinators. Their work has an entrepreneurial function. They are often given a task to pursue an issue from an open mandate and are expected to be creative and get stakeholders to commit to the issue, explains Algotson.

The trends that have driven the entrepreneurial logic are also present in other public sectors. This means that the entrepreneurial spirit is spreading in public administration.

– That is where it is heading. There is a general shift from the bureaucratic to the entrepreneurial way of working.

But of course, it looks different, he says. Some areas have to be more bureaucratic, such as social services. It’s a very rule-driven and to some extent politically sensitive business, although people with an entrepreneurial mindset are likely to be employed there too.

The entrepreneur challenges fundamental values

Previous administrative research has also established that public administration does not always operate according to a bureaucratic logic, but that entrepreneurial people exist there too. At the same time, entrepreneurship has been seen as something radically different. But Algotson’s research shows that it is instead the norm, at least in the growth area he has studied.

– The entrepreneurial logic is now institutionalized. That is the thinking that reigns there. That’s one of my contributions to the research, says Albin Algotson, who also believes that we should be aware of what the shift from bureaucratic to entrepreneurial logic means for the fundamental values of public administration.

Bureaucratic administrative logic is constructed on the basis that it supports certain important values such as impartiality, equal treatment and the fact that the work is supported by law.

– Can the entrepreneur who is supposed to establish personal relationships and inspire others live up to those values? Or do we start to override them in a more entrepreneurial logic? We should ask ourselves that.

Who is in charge – really?

With his research, Albin Algotson also wants to put the governance of public administration under the microscope. Because if we have entrepreneurial employees who are creative and innovative and who seek support for their ideas from politicians, one might ask who is really in charge.

– The idea is that politicians should run the administrations. But if we have an administration that is very entrepreneurial, with employees trying to convince politicians with new ideas, it risks being the other way around. So how do we get good governance of an administration that becomes more entrepreneurial? That’s an important question, says Albin Algotson.

Contact albin.algotson@liu.se

More about the thesis
The thesis is called Entrepreneurial management: On the administrative logic of local development policy and can be downloaded. The municipalities that Albin Algotson has studied are Flen, Gotland, Haninge, Härjedalen, Kramfors, Munkedal, Surahammar, Vimmerby, Östhammar and Överkalix. They have received support from the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth to work on development issues that they themselves believe strengthen the municipality’s attractiveness. Albin Algotson will defend his thesis on January 28 at 13.15 at Linköping University. Follow the defense via the link.

Read also The customer concept annoys the Swedish Enforcement Authority’s employees, which is about the Swedish Enforcement Authority’s entrepreneurial approach.