Abstract
In this chapter, we aim to contribute towards the understanding of how and why municipalities organize local technical services the way they do, focusing on the rise and fall of a municipal enterprise. To understand such a marketization development, we explore the organizational changes within the park sector in Oslo Municipality in the 2000s to the 2010s, pointing out key factors explaining these organizational changes. Oslo established a municipal enterprise in 2005, but abolished this enterprise after four years of operation. The key reason was the politically launched marketization process. The municipal enterprise had considerable operational competence but faced capacity challenges and struggled with professionality and social aspects. Therefore, it was not robust enough to compete on market terms. Eventually, Oslo Municipality merged park and road services to one procurement unit and introduced full-scale contracting out to external entrepreneurs.
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Notes
- 1.
KF means that this is a municipal enterprise. KFs offer no limited liability for the owner but have a separate board of directors and a managing director. If more than one municipality and/or county is owner, the company is an intermunicipal company.
- 2.
Norway belongs to the European Economic Area (EEA), which means that EU law related to the internal market is also transposed into Norwegian law.
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Solfjeld, I., Leiren, M.D. (2020). Municipal Enterprise as a Pretext for Marketization of Park Services: Insights from Oslo. In: Lindholst, A., Hansen, M. (eds) Marketization in Local Government. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32478-0_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32478-0_14
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