Konsten med samverkan : från idéer till praktik

Sammanfattning: The main objective of this licentiate thesis is to describe and analyse how personnel and managers within social welfare departments and county council experience that cooperation works. Focusing on the cooperation which has occurred within four projects connected to work within psychiatric care as well as the care of substance users, between the year 2004 and 2009. These four projects comprise the thesis' case studies and have the names (I) Socialtjänsten i samverkan, (II) Miltonprojektet, (III) Case management, and (IV) Prisma. The interviews and questionnaires conducted during these projects provide the empirical data. The thesis describes how changes within the public sector engender the necessity for cooperation between organisations that have different areas of responsibilities. From the background from these changes and new institutional organisational theory how the good idea that exists about cooperation are received and implemented in the practical work of organisations is discussed and analysed. The results of the case studies indicate that ideas about cooperation are implemented in different ways and from different prerequisites. Of importance are which form of cooperation and which way of organising cooperation is selected by those that implement cooperation in the organisation. Even the cooperation that occurs and develops between those that cooper­ate has an affect. This relationship is facilitated when there trust exists between those that cooperate. The ideas about cooperation are usually implemented from the top, for example through project financing by the state, via the managers of organisations and down through the organisation. Of interest of this thesis is that there are examples where personnel initiate cooperation. When cooperation is initiated by personnel it creates room for personnel to form cooperation and alternative ways to support cooperation work for manager. Organisations that according to new institutional theory find themselves in the same organ­isational field tend to become more like one another. Through cooperation in project form, joint meetings, education, integration of the activities and such this homogenisation occurs. In those case studies where an integration of the common work has occurred, at the same time as those which cooperate become more like each other boarders to other organisations emerge. In the result it emerges that there is an attempt to be more like each other among those who cooperate at the same time as they want to be unique and have a specific organi­sation identity. Rounding off, The Art of Cooperation is about understanding that the ideas concerning coop­eration are transferred from, for example the state to practice. The exception consists of Prisma, where the ideas about cooperation are implemented by the personnel and not by the managers. The ideas will be translated and edited by those that work in organisations and that there are ways for personnel and managers to act and relate to cooperation in practice which can promote the good ideas about cooperation, depending on a supporting structure for cooperation but even on the way that actors relate with cooperation where trust facilitates it.