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Smart city governance: exploring the institutional work of multiple actors towards collaboration

Smart city governance: exploring the institutional work of multiple actors towards collaboration To address the growing pressure to foster effectiveness, sustainability and quality of life, local governments have focused on developing policies and initiatives designed to make their cities smarter. Despite the growing attention paid to this issue, an important but under-investigated issue is represented by the smart city governance. In this regard, in light of the claimed need for collaboration, the purpose of this paper is to investigate why and how different institutional works carried out by multiple actors may explain the way in which collaborative governance can be constructed in the context of a smart city.Design/methodology/approachA rich in-depth case study has been carried out exploring the experience of a smart city in the north of Italy. The study explores the institutional works done by multiple actors (Lawrence et al., 2013) and their influence on the governance of the smart city.FindingsCollaboration is perceived to be instrumental in making a city smart, during the design and implementation phase, while generating new challenges that must be overcome by an integration of the political, technical and, especially, cultural work of the collective actors involved.Originality/valueDespite governance is recognized as a crucial factor for realizing a smartness-orientation, it is scarcely investigated. The main value of the current research is thus its contribution to overcome this gap providing new empirical evidence on the role of multiple actors in the smart city context. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Journal of Public Sector Management Emerald Publishing

Smart city governance: exploring the institutional work of multiple actors towards collaboration

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Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
© Emerald Publishing Limited
ISSN
0951-3558
DOI
10.1108/ijpsm-05-2018-0126
Publisher site
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Abstract

To address the growing pressure to foster effectiveness, sustainability and quality of life, local governments have focused on developing policies and initiatives designed to make their cities smarter. Despite the growing attention paid to this issue, an important but under-investigated issue is represented by the smart city governance. In this regard, in light of the claimed need for collaboration, the purpose of this paper is to investigate why and how different institutional works carried out by multiple actors may explain the way in which collaborative governance can be constructed in the context of a smart city.Design/methodology/approachA rich in-depth case study has been carried out exploring the experience of a smart city in the north of Italy. The study explores the institutional works done by multiple actors (Lawrence et al., 2013) and their influence on the governance of the smart city.FindingsCollaboration is perceived to be instrumental in making a city smart, during the design and implementation phase, while generating new challenges that must be overcome by an integration of the political, technical and, especially, cultural work of the collective actors involved.Originality/valueDespite governance is recognized as a crucial factor for realizing a smartness-orientation, it is scarcely investigated. The main value of the current research is thus its contribution to overcome this gap providing new empirical evidence on the role of multiple actors in the smart city context.

Journal

International Journal of Public Sector Management – Emerald Publishing

Published: May 1, 2019

Keywords: Local government; Institutional work; New public governance; Smart city; Collaborative governance

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