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The paper is guided by the question of how public organizations can adapt to include citizens as co-producers of public values. To answer it, eleven researchers and civil servants, all involved in the transformation of a collaborative platform encompassing a university and four different public organizations, formed a collaborative and boundary-spanning author. Building on personal expertise and situated organizational experiences we conclude that public organizations do not adapt except for specific confined areas where they can still control and command outcomes important to them. Hence, public organizations struggle to become co-producers of new public values. From the process, we also conclude that academics and civil servants together writing an academic article cannot be viewed as a fertile common ground for equal collaboration and co-production. Nevertheless, it might still work as an interesting boundary-spanning activity for arriving at shared understandings and important insights on for instance why organizational moves from intended to actual involvement appear difficult.

There is a growing pressure for innovation in the public sector. Research on innovation suggests a new role for organizations, from a producer of predefined goods and services to a facilitator of co-creation and new forms of network-based governance. Previous research is mostly focused on the need for organizations to collaborate across sectors (inter-organizational) to promote innovation, less on the need for collaboration across local governments different departments (intra-organizational) but also across smaller units (inter-departmental). The aim is to explore how internal conditions affect a municipality’s innovation capability. 

This is done through a study based on interviews with departmental managers. The study reveals a heterogenic organizational environment where managing is situated and intra-departmental on the expense of inter-departmental and intra-organizational collaborations. The study also reveals that the situation is created by established practices, processes and structures which do not promote inter-departmental collaborations and thus does not build intra-organizational innovation capabilities.

The concept of organizational ambidexterity, balancing act between the conflicting demands of exploit and explore, has been a part of the discussion in innovation research for a long time. Managers ability to balance tensions is a crucial capacity for organisations to be able to promote and support innovation. However, there is still a lack of research which takes multiple levels of analysis into account, how organisations can become ambidextrous, and which focuses on a single organisation.

The study is a qualitative case study which investigates the balancing of tensions in a Swedish municipality and the connections between the organisational and individual levels of contextual ambidexterity. The article identifies a low ambidextrous environment, how this is affected by the interplay between the two levels of analysis where the organsational mechanism enforce routines which contributes to a lack of ability to balance tensions amongst individuals and at a group level. Further, in low ambidextrous environments, behaviors amongst individuals does not appear to be enough to promote organisational ambidexterity.

The article finds the routinization of innovation to be an important step for organisations which wish to improve the environment for ambidexterity. The article contributes to the understanding of ambidexterity by the need to focus on both mechanisms and behaviors, as well as the aggregated group level, to further develop the understanding of how public sector organisations promote and support innovation.

This article explores the role of middle managers in building innovation capacity within a Swedish municipality, focusing on how collaborative advantage across departmental silos contribute to innovation outcomes. Drawing on a five-year insider action research project, the study examines how middle managers created and maintained an informal innovation space that enabled cross-boundary collaboration, trust-based leadership, and employee-driven innovation. While top management provided initial support, the long-term responsibility for maintaining innovation capacity rested with middle managers, who acted as both implementers and strategic leaders. Through narrative analysis of meeting observations and interviews, the study highlights how middle managers developed a shared identity rooted in collaboration, enabling them to navigate organizational tensions and promote new ways of working. The findings show that innovation capacity in fragmented public organizations depends not only on structural conditions but also on relational work, strategic communication, and the ability to foster collaborative advantage. The study contributes to public sector innovation literature by emphasizing the importance of middle managers’ internal collaboration and their role in shaping innovation beyond formal mandates. It also underscores the need for stronger alignment between middle andtop management to ensure the long-term integration of innovation capacity into organizational routines.

In this autoethnographic article, I explore my experiences as a true insider, one with a dual position of researcher/practitioner in combination with organizational membership and experience in a studied setting. The concept of insider has mainly been explored as a methodological approach, where insider position concerns the relationship between researchers and participants. As someone who does research in combination with practical responsibilities, literature on co-production could only provide some guidance since the literature tends to be written from a researcher’s perspective; this is how one as a researcher co-produces, but provides fewer answers for researchers who are embedded by default. By reflecting on my experiences, I identify potential conceptual differences between different perspectives of the position of insider, both researcher-insider (as methodology) and insider-researcher (as membership) emerge with different categories to them. These categories are conceptually differentiated by experience, membership, enter and exit, responsibilities, and potential for long-term dialogue. The article identifies potential gaps for future research in the current literature on co-production for insider- researcher, mainly concerning quality criteria when change and actionable knowledge might be difficult to achieve; as well as potential difficulties concerning research ethics which may arise due to access and when one inhibits a dual position. The article also highlights how long-term implications, which could contribute to the co-production paradigm, are hidden due to difficulties in communicating practical experiences back to research unless done by a researcher.