Brobyggare, arbetsledare eller snarare slasktratt? : Konstruktioner av samordnare i platsannonser

Sammanfattning

In network governance, coordinators have come to play an important role within acollaborative context, bringing together actors at various levels from civil society, the public,and the private sectors. Previous research shows a complex picture regarding the design andcontent of the assignment, as well as the coordinator's characteristics. The purpose of thisstudy is to investigate how the coordinator assignment is constructed in job advertisements,drawing inspiration from Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory. Working with the results,we identified the theoretical concepts used in our analysis: Czarniawska’s concepts of travelof ideas, translation, and materialization; Williams’ and Ernits’ ideal types for boundaryspanners and the concept of hybrid professionals. The results of our study show that thecoordinator is constructed in a varied manner, that the assignment is diffuse and encompassesdifferent dimensions, and that it places varying demands on education, experience, andcompetencies. Furthermore, our results show that the concept of the coordinator continues tochange and has not yet been institutionalized. Based on our empirical material, we have foundthat coordinators can be divided into five groups: the Administrator, the Public Servant, theSupervisor, the Operations Developer, and the Bridge Builder. These groups relate in differentways to boundary-spanning work and hybridity regarding the descriptions of the assignments.Through our study, we hope to contribute new perspectives regarding the variation andambiguity that characterize the concept of the coordinator, as we have not found previousresearch that studies the coordinator role through job advertisements.