In past decades, hybrid organizations and institutional complexity have received growing attention, yet questions remain about how hybrids manage institutional complexity in the Nordic welfare states. This article investigates how Norwegian social enterprises (SEs), a subset of hybrid organizations, internally manage contradictory demands when externally engaging with multiple logics. The data consists of interviews of leaders and staff members from five SEs, and the findings show that most institutional referents hold a public-sector logic which may crowd out the hybrid nature of SEs. Depending on the conflicting demands, SEs mix decoupling and selective coupling when responding to them. Some were also found to rely on the structural responses of organizational compartmentalization. Compared to the blended hybrids, the structural hybrids experience less internal tension when managing institutional complexity since logic compartmentalization allows the organizations to attend both to their in-use logic and at-play demands. The data yield compelling insights into how the Nordic welfare state may incite a specific configuration of SE where logic compartmentalization appears as a pragmatic choice.

This chapter evaluates the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Articles Art. 37 and 40) in the policy and practice of detention of children within the Norwegian criminal justice system. It covers three different forms of detention (pre-trial police custody, pre-trial court-ordered custody and detention as punishment) from a legal and empirical perspective. The chapter finds that Norway has, to a large extent, addressed many critiques from the CRC Committee, including on limitation of the use of detention, conditions for detained children, and the need for various law reforms. However, challenges remain in relation to time-unlimited preventive detention of children and conditions in police detention. Moreover, the authors highlight a cross-cutting challenge within Norway has-the near absence of specialization with regard to youth criminal justice, and conclude that there is a need for the further development of alternatives to traditional criminal justice detention. KEYWORDS criminal justice | police custody | pre-trial custody | punishment | CRC | children's rights 1. We wish to thank the informants from the Norwegian Correctional Services, the National Police Directorate, key personnel at Bergen and Oslo Police Districts and the Norwegian Bar Association who all provided valuable information to the work with this chapter. We also want to thank Ingun Fornes, the editors of this book, and the reviewer, for productive comments on the content of the chapter.

Purpose This study aims to analyse how top-level policymakers across the political left-right spectrum in a social-democratic welfare state understand social enterprise (SE), its relation to existing welfare institutions and their intentions of policymaking towards SE. Design/methodology/approach This study conducted in-depth interviews explicitly focused on SE with policymakers at the national level in Norway. The informants collectively represented most political parties in Norway’s Parliament in 2017–2021. Data were analysed using a historical institutional perspective. Findings Centre-right wing policymakers predominantly consider SE as commercial enterprises not requiring specific policies. Left wing policymakers prefer that SEs operate like voluntary organizations and advocate policies preventing extraction of profit and competition with public service providers. Hence, policymakers positioned SE within an overarching political debate on the privatization of welfare services. They expressed little interest in developing policies aimed at strengthening SE opportunity structures. Research limitations/implications Policy inaction impedes recognition of SEs as different from commercial and voluntary organizations, as well as their ability to compete for tenders. Thus, SE will likely remain a rather marginal phenomenon in Norway. Further research is needed to establish whether and how Norway’s universal welfare state inhibits social entrepreneurship on the society-wide level. Originality/value This article details how SE is understood within a social democratic welfare regime and the likely consequences thereof for SEs. It contributes with new knowledge of why policymakers may be reluctant to develop policy dedicated to further SE, across different political party affiliations. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in Norway to analyse how existing institutions and political controversies influence how policymakers at the national level approach SE.

Some of the extant literature on collaborative public sector innovation seems to assume that collaboration per se implies a positive outcome. Recent research, however, has demonstrated that innovation processes may take different shapes and trajectories depending on, for example, the collaborating actors’ diverging (or converging) perceptions of the given situation. In this article, we seek to contribute to understanding the nature of potential challenges in public sector innovation processes. We interviewed seven key actors involved in developing and implementing a new introduction programme for refugees in a municipality in Norway. The interviews explored how the innovation process evolved and how the different actors experienced their participation in the process. In this article, we use the classic four ‘moments of translation’ approach proposed by Callon (1986) to shed light on the main tensions that arose for the project team in the 18 months after the project was launched. These challenges related to why the innovation was realised, how such an innovation should be operationalised, for whom the innovation was targeted and whose innovation project the project was initially. In conclusion, we argue that to address the tensions that may arise in any collaborative project, innovation leaders must establish a ‘structure for collaboration’ that includes a space in which to acknowledge and potentially solve emerging challenges.