Organizations in cooperation within development partnerships : the impact of organizational fields and institutions

Background and purpose Attempts to solve important societal issues, for example long-term sick leave and unemployment, nowadays often involve several and varying type of actors. The European Union supports for example cooperation in projects aiming for new solutions and models to fight the problems. Temporary organizations are formed for this purpose at international, national, regional and local levels, with actors from public sector on different levels, representatives from private companies and non-profit organizations. At times, also the target group affected by the problem is involved. Formations of this kind can apply for funding for a certain period. The constellation lasts for this project only, and a possible continuation depends on the result of the project, or rather whether new funding is received. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a specific type of temporary cooperation between actors from different organizational fields within a temporary organization, what is called Development Partnerships. In our case, the members of the partnership comprises of other organizations, but we especially want to stress the issue concerning actors without organizational belonging, and their participation with actors from well established organizations belonging to institutionalised fields