BALANCING PARADOXES FOR COLLECTIVE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION National and Local Digital Transformation Initiatives in Swedish Municipalities

Sammanfattning

In the context of changing demographics and increasing demand for welfare services, digital transformation offers opportunities to address several growing challenges in the public sector. However, municipalities responsible for delivering these services often struggle to fully realise the value of digital transformation. Previous research has highlighted collective digital transformation as a solution to these challenges, where municipalities extend their efforts beyond organisational boundaries and col-laborate with external actors to achieve economies of scale and synergies. Existing research have primarily focused on horizontal collaboration between municipalities, while vertical collaboration between municipalities and national actors has received less attention. At the national level, efforts are being made to create more equitable conditions for digital transformation through coordinated approaches, shared infra-structure, and standardisation. However, many of these nationally developed solu-tions require significant local adaptation, and the process from implementation to realised value is often long and complex. This study explores how municipalities balance national digital transformation initiatives with their own local efforts. Through a qualitative approach, interviews with 20 Swedish municipalities and with paradox theory as a theoretical framework, the findings show that municipalities ap-proach this balance in different ways. The results indicate that most municipalities primarily orient themselves toward either national or local initiatives, while only a few manage to integrate both in a way that generates synergies and enhances public value creation. These differences are explained by how municipalities navigate the underlying and interrelated tensions between national and local demands, which are shaped by varying organisational conditions.