Fra værdi til invitationer: Offentlig værdiskabelse gennem affekt, potentialitet og begivenhed

In the past three decades we have witnessed fierce debate on the welfare state. This debate has primarily been shaped by the question of what kind of welfare we can afford, now and in the future. But it is not just a debate about finances. It is also a debate on how we can perceive our welfare society and its organization in new ways.
So, welfare and how we organize it is what is at stake here. This creates tensions and insecurity, probably in more ways than one. Because this premise also raises the question of qualitatively better welfare through new types of organizations and through new perspectives on public value creation.
In this treatise I raise the following research question: How can public institutions enable and create public value through organizing communities?
My theoretical and empirical movements are guided by a focus on how public organizations can work within relational tensions and increased complexity by enabling new organizational movements that actually create public value?
So, this thesis experiments with public value and the organizations that can facilitate it. It falls within the literature on Public Value Creation (PVC). PVC is characterized by a lack of empirical research and by theories on value and organization that are too weak to support PVC in being a generative and cross-disciplinary understanding.
That is why I have derived theoretical perspectives from Organization Theory (OT). I use these to enable a shift from formal public organization focussed on boundaries and structures to an analytical attention to the cohesive power of heterogeneous organizational actors clashing in events.
I draw on the Canadian philosopher Brian Massumi and his thoughts on affect and value which allow me to experiment with public value in its full activating and inclusive sense. I work with public value creation as a question of direct intensifications of qualitative experiences.
The thesis is informed by Massumi's view of affect as intensity, as relational tensions and non-linear processes, where feedback dynamics create a margin of and for change. This affective angle opens our understanding of organizing communities.
Methodologically, the thesis is centred on affirmative critique, research-creation and post-qualitative understanding. Coupled with Massumi's thinking this makes for a rather untraditional composition of the thesis. Empirical examples cut through theoretical perspectives as contrastive and intensifying flashes. These examples are written as lived abstractions in a poetic style where the language of the thesis is allowed to play with a right here, right now vibe.
The thesis is divided into two parts. Part One is focussed on theory and methodology, whereas Part Two takes us into the empirical events that the thesis revolves around.
Empirically, the thesis is informed by passionate involvements and experiments in two Danish municipalities across three and a half years.
The main contribution of the thesis is the notion that public value creation is predominantly a question of making invitations. Creating invitations enables and creates value. If we are not inclusive, if we do not invite into value creating processes, there will be no relational energy to make public value creation create lived life – between us. These invitations, then, can be operationalized in and around four frisky movements: the inviting, mutual inclusion, liveliness and stirring contrasts.
In a differentiating way these frisky movements enhance and increase the quality of emerging communities. Organizing communities intensify and modulate the immanent and singular qualities of the present. By intensifying experiences, we can passionately experiment with public value creation.
Affect and become affected.