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DEMOS-Demokratisk og effektiv styring, planlegging og forvaltning

BYFORSK - Governing the green shift in Oslo, Gothenburg and Copenhagen through leadership of co-creation

Alternative title: Styring,ledelse og samskaping av det grønne skiftet i Oslo, Gøteborg og København

Awarded: NOK 11.9 mill.

The Greengov project 2017-2021 contributes new knowledge on which leadership strategies and mechanisms that effectively support co-creation, learning and innovation in favor of climate transformation. The empirical basis is a comparative case study of Oslo, Gothenburg, Copenhagen and Cape Town?s climate leadership at the city, metropolitan and international level. The study shows how politicians and administrators in the cities act as strategists and initiators of different forms of co-creation with various relevant and concerned actors public agencies, private companies, civil society organizations and academia (city-level); neighboring municipalities, service providers and state actors (metropolitan level); global cities, climate experts and idealistic foundations in trans-local climate networks (international level). The following points summarize key findings: - Co-creation is a key element of climate governance, acting as an integrated element of public policy design and implementation processes involving representatives of municipal entities, private companies, state agencies, civil society organizations and academia - Co-creational leadership can be defined as a hybrid form of governance mixing several types of leadership and governance instruments in order to unleash the transformative potential of relevant actors - Citizens are engaged less than professional actors from the public, private and organized civil society spheres - The co-creational leadership identified in the cities is pragmatic, directed towards handling concrete conceptual, institutional or technological problems. - Several comparative analyses between pairs of cities and all four cities identify specific leadership approaches to goal-setting, multi-level governance, polycentric network governance as well as to climate transformation in general. - Development of new concepts, tasks and typologies providing new, in-depth knowledge - Two key challenges needs to be addressed in future research and practice: to integrate social justice as a concern for urban climate governance and to develop a more comprehensive and stringent policy for co-creation, as cities are critically dependent on contribution from a wealth of actors at different levels of governance to attain ambitious global climate goals 15 scientific journal articles/book chapters/scientific report, 5 popular scientific publications and 71 dissemination measures (including conference papers) give a more nuanced and in-depth presentation of these results. They will outlive the Greengov project not only through written publications and communications, but also in three new research projects inspired by Greengov results, as well as in the four cities? climate strategies where Greengov has made an impact.

- New theoretical insights regarding the nuanced roles city leadership take on to co-create with relevant actors, and key contextual factors conditioning an stimulating the cities' leadership - Constructive and critical comments to the cities' climate strategies providing new understanding and priorities - Production of scientific knowledge together with city representative, published in international journal - Understanding of the limitations of city-lab as an instrument and arena for discussion and development of abstract, leadership strategies - Inspiration to new project proposals, three of which received funding - Dissemination of results to students, practitioners and researchers

GREENGOV aims to create new and cutting edge knowledge about the challenges and dilemmas public leaders face in governing the green shift in Oslo, Copenhagen, and Gothenburg. The focus is on political and administrative leadership in networks and co-creation arenas, and how leadership affects the outcomes towards sustainable, low carbon cities. A main hypothesis is that co-creation is facilitated through particular forms of interactive leadership that facilitates learning and innovation in networks to address the complex multiscalar and multiactor challenges involved in promoting the green shift. The main research question is; which leadership strategies and mechanisms can effectively support co-creation, learning and innovation in favour of the green shift? Key governance mechanisms available to political and administrative leaders to this end will be investigated including their management tools, strategies, institutional design and choice of governance mechanisms. To this end, we are interested in how and to what extent cities are capable of creating synergies between institutional layers of hierarchical, market-inspired and network measures that represent diverse leadership strategies. The transdisciplinary research approach is enriched by the use of innovative CityLabs as design experiments to investigate how different leadership interventions influence green co-creation. Lessons on leadership and co-creation will emerge from case-studies and co-creational actions in the cities. GREENGOV will facilitate additional learning through comparison of the Scandinavian city cases with examples from Cape Town. This will provide new insights and learning about co-creational leadership from a different institutional setting. The empirical findings will lead to policy and institutional design lessons.Theoretical contributions will be provided on leadership and co-creation theory. The CityLabs will build co-creational capacity across the cities for a green shift.

Publications from Cristin

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DEMOS-Demokratisk og effektiv styring, planlegging og forvaltning