Construction of inter-organisational partnership in the public sector

Creation of inter-organisational partnership is one aspect of innovation in the public sector. This paper describes a three-year pilot project (USSiT) from 2015 – 2018 constituting three large Norwegian public organisations, and an evaluation of it. The main evaluation objective was to obtain knowledge of how the project had functioned as a basis for future development and pursuing of the partnership. The participating organisations are a university, a county authority and a local council. The main objective of USSiT was to develop a close collaboration between the three partners regarding teacher education at the university and selected practice schools. A selection of the evaluation results will be presented and related to relevant theory. Top and middle management and leadership are focused.
Organisations constitute systems and people. This paper mainly focuses on the system and formal aspects in creating partnership including management, coordination between organisations and the relationship between structural and dynamic aspects. Collaboration between two or more large organisations may involve several organisational levels. The management hierarchy constitutes structural levels or layers as top managers, middle and lower managers, and employees. In addition, the initial phase implies creation of both inter-organisational structures and processes. The degree to which this will influence intra-organisational structures and processes, may vary from organisation to organisation and from project to project.