Cooperation is no Panacea : Inter-municipal Cooperation, Service Delivery, and the Optimum Scale of Operation. A Study of how Cooperation Affects Performance in Local Service Delivery
Inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is one of the most widely-used organizational alternatives in local governments’ attempts to adapt to ever-increasing demands for high quality and cost-efficient services. Although IMC is widespread, studies of its effects are largely lacking. The existing studies show contradicting results, causing more and more scholars to ask what determines whether or not cooperation is successful. This study contributes to filling this gap by asking, when and how shared service delivery is beneficial. The study’s empirical work is constituted of four separate articles. Each article uses one specific service as an empirical case for analyzing the effects cooperation on one or two distinct dimensions of performance. Together, these studies provide an empirical ground for comparing and discussing how the effects of cooperation may depend on cooperation size and tasks characteristics.publishedVersio
