Artikkelissa tarkastellaan kuntien luottamushenkilöiden kokemaa häirintää ja uhkailua: Millaista häirintää kuntien luottamushenkilöt kohtaavat ja millaisia vaikutuksia häirintäkokemuksilla on? Tutkimuksessa yhdistetään aineistoja aineistotriangulaation avulla. Aineistoina on käytetty haastatteluja ja kyselyä. Laadullisen, tätä tutkimusta varten kerätyn haastatteluaineiston analyysimenetelmänä käytetään narratiivisesti orientoitunutta sisällönanalyysia. Häirintäilmiötä kehystetään teoreettisesti poliittisen kulttuurin ja kompleksisen hallinnan tarkastelujen avulla. Tutkimus osoittaa, että luottamushenkilöt kohtaavat erilaisia häirinnän muotoja. Myös häirinnän kanavia on useita. Luottamushenkilöiden kohtaaman häirinnän eri muotojen tunnistaminen on tärkeää, jotta häirintään voidaan puuttua. Häirinnällä on monenlaisia vaikutuksia. Yhteiskunnallisella tasolla pulmia aiheuttaa ehdokasasettelun hankaloituminen. Demokratian kannalta on vakavaa, jos ihmiset eivät uskalla asettua ehdolle häirinnän pelossa tai luopuvat luottamushenkilöpaikastaan häirintää koettuaan. Etenkin kuntapäätöksenteossa ehdokkaiden moninaisuus ja keskinäinen erilaisuus on nähty arvona. Lisäksi häirintä vaikuttaa julkiseen keskusteluun. Joistain asioista ei haluta keskustella julkisesti häirinnän pelossa, mikä saattaa vinouttaa poliittista keskustelua. Riskinä on myös häirinnän normalisoituminen.

In this article, we explore the embedding of citizen participation in local government. Our study combines and synthesizes the focal aspects of two theoretical streams—citizen participation and interactive governance—in a novel way to identify, illustrate, and analyze the layers of governance required for citizen participation. The analysis shows how the institutional pervasiveness and holistic nature of citizen participation affects the strategic, executive, and citizen interface layers of governance and their interconnections. The research contributes to the literature on embedding citizen participation in government by emphasizing the need to address citizen participation as a profound question of governance and management.

Background Resilience is often referred to when assessing the ability of health systems to maintain their functions during unexpected events. Primary healthcare forms the basis for the health system and thus its resilient responses are vital for the outcomes of the whole system. Understanding how primary healthcare organisations are able to build resilience before, during, and after unexpected or sudden shocks, is key to public health preparedness. This study aims to identify how leaders responsible for local health systems interpreted changes in their operational environment during the first year of COVID-19, and to elucidate how these views reflect aspects of resilience in healthcare. Methods The data consist of 14 semi-structured individual interviews with leaders of local health systems in Finland representing primary healthcare. The participants were recruited from four regions. An abductive thematic analysis was used to identify entities from the viewpoints of the purpose, resources, and processes of resilience in the healthcare organisation. Results Results were summarised as six themes, which suggest that embracing uncertainty is viewed by the interviewees a basis for primary healthcare functioning. Leading towards adaptability was regarded a distinct leadership task enabling the organisation to modify its functions according to demands of the changing operational environment. Workforce, knowledge and sensemaking, as well as collaboration represented what the leaders viewed as the means for achieving adaptability. The ability to adapt functioned to comprehensively meet the population’s service needs built on a holistic approach. Conclusions The results showed how the leaders who participated in this study adapted their work during changes brought on by the pandemic, and what they viewed as critical for maintaining organisational resilience. The leaders considered embracing uncertainty as a principal feature of their work rather than viewing uncertainty as aberrant and something to avoid. These notions, along with what the leaders considered as critical means for building resilience and adaptability should be addressed and elaborated in future research. Research on resilience and leadership should be conducted more in the complex context of primary healthcare, where cumulative stresses are encountered and processed continuously.

This article, based on narratives of experienced (born between 1945 and 1950) municipal chief executive officers, investigates changes that challenge leadership inlocal government. Four factors emerge: the dissolution of municipal boundaries; cooled relations between the State and municipalities; municipal inhabitants’ changing role from participatory residents to exacting customers; and fragmentation oflocal politics. These four changes reveal the diversity of local leaders’ everyday environment, illustrating and exploring how day-to-day management takes place in the intersection of more and more complex governance relations.

This study investigated the collaboration between public and third-sector organisations (TSOs) in the framework of collaborative governance. We examined how TSOs portray their collaboration with public organisations and what kind of collaboration agency can be identified based on these descriptions. Using a discourse analytical approach, we identified three multifaceted, and somewhat paradoxical, types of collaboration agency discourse in third-sector organisations: situationalised, service system–oriented, and dependency-driven. We argue that collaborative governance both sets expectations and shapes the agency of TSOs. At the same time, TSOs strategically use these opportunities to their advantage, constantly reshaping their collaboration with public organisations.