The Nordic narrative on local government highlights municipalities’ role in social consumption, a model, which is often considered a success story. The purpose of this paper is to…
Abstract
Purpose
The Nordic narrative on local government highlights municipalities’ role in social consumption, a model, which is often considered a success story. The purpose of this paper is to apply Gerry Stoker’s (2011) theory on local government roles in society to critically analyse the sustainability of the Nordic model.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on literature review, documents and statistics of Nordic public authorities’, the author formulates exploratory theoretical propositions on the sustainability of the Nordic model of local government.
Findings
The emphasis placed on welfare task has made Nordic local government overloaded and vulnerable to central government intervention and reforms, resulting in a cumulative process towards an ever narrowing conception of local government.
Research limitations/implications
The research results are exploratory. Comparative empirical research is needed to verify the idea.
Social implications
The legitimacy of Nordic local government may be challenged because of municipalities’ weakening possibilities to discharge their welfare role in a manner that would satisfy citizens’ growing needs.
Originality/value
The paper is a critical analyses of the sustainability of local government system in Nordic countries. It discusses the possible negative consequences of the overemphasis of the welfare role of local government.
Details
Keywords
Public leadership literature has recognised the need for specific integrative leadership style in boundary-crossing collaborations, and it has been proposed as a new umbrella term…
Abstract
Purpose
Public leadership literature has recognised the need for specific integrative leadership style in boundary-crossing collaborations, and it has been proposed as a new umbrella term for describing such leadership in boundary-crossing settings. The article reviews the research literature on integrative leadership and describes and analyses its contents by answering the following question: What are the characteristics of integrative public leadership?
Design/methodology/approach
To review the integrative leadership literature, a systematic literature review was conducted. The databases and search services included Web of Science, Andor provided by Tampere University, Scopus, Emerald, Business Source Ultimate (Ebsco) and ScienceDirect (Elsevier). The search terms were accordingly chosen as integrative leadership, integrative public leadership and public integrative leadership. From the hundreds of search hits 25 research articles were selected in the reviewing process to be further analysed through qualitative content analysis. Crosby and Bryson’s (2010) framework for understanding leadership and the creation and maintenance of cross-sector collaborations was used as a starting point for the categorisation.
Findings
The article presents an improved integrative leadership framework that helps to identify the factors shaping integrative leadership and visualises better the interconnection of structures, processes and participants, through which leadership is enacted in the collaborative network.
Originality/value
The article extends the knowledge on integrative public leadership and helps to direct future research.
Details
Keywords
This article aims to reveal the benefits and opportunities that commissioning procedure has to offer for nearly zero-energy building (nZEB) projects. Another goal is to sculpture…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to reveal the benefits and opportunities that commissioning procedure has to offer for nearly zero-energy building (nZEB) projects. Another goal is to sculpture the commissioning process and, especially, commissioning consultant’s tasks to fit nZEB projects.
Design/methodology/approach
The idea was to incorporate the literature from two fields: commissioning and nZEB, and find out if commissioning would fit nZEB projects. Challenges offered by nZEB technology were pointed out and the solutions offered to these problems by commissioning were established. Expert interviews were used to test the findings.
Findings
Commissioning was found valuable for complex nZEB projects and even worthwhile investing to in simple nZEB projects. Quality assurance is a huge task when the change to nZEB construction happens in 2020 and commissioning can be a valuable tool to prevent large-scale quality problems. A number of additions were made to the example commissioning process used in Finland today.
Originality/value
This article gives evidence for economical usability of commissioning procedure in nZEB projects and reason to start investigating the possibility to attach commissioning as a mandatory procedure to all nZEB projects.