Da arbejdet i samarbejdet forsvandt: Økonomiske kosmologier som optimeringslogikker i jagten på mere for mindre

The public sector has acquired a reputation for being inefficient and static, and countless reforms have through the years been launched in attempts to reorganize and optimize it. The article describes how two different and contradicting logics of optimization based on two different economic cosmologies are at play simultaneously. One logic is based on neo-classical economic theories about economic man and the market mechanism, why competitive distanced trade-relations are preferred as organizing principle. The other logic is based on the idea that collaboration, network and partnerships will spur innovation and growth through synergy and win-win, why close, trusting and binding are preferred as organizing principle. Through an analysis of collaboration in a public-private innovation project within elderly care, it is shown how some of the partners in the project end up working for free, because their work is not being seen as work to be paid, but as an investment in the creation of value, that does not yet exist, why there is no need to pay anyone for anything.