Collaborative innovation and management control in times of crisis: Tensions of a disrupted project in public healthcare

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the tensions of collaborative innovation projects in the public sector and how they can be dealt with via the use of different control forms. An additional purpose is to understand how the use of those controls evolves over time due to an unexpected crisis (Covid-19). The chapter draws upon public management and management control literature combined with empirical observations from a collaborative innovation project implemented at Perstorp Municipality in Sweden. The project, called Digital Innovation for Dementia Care (DIDEC), aimed at developing innovative products/services for dementia care. Based on the findings achieved through interventionist research conducted over three and half years, this chapter shows how tensions arising in collaborative innovation projects in the public sector can be successfully dealt with by progressively balancing the use of formal and informal control forms in different parts of the project organization and during the different stages of the project implementation. However, this balance was suddenly destabilized by a crisis. It was threatened by the outbreak of Covid-19, which led to the dominance of formal controls focusing on the achievement of predetermined targets, thereby neglecting the (unexpected) added value resulting from the project.