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The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature on how actors manage competing logics in an organizational field. The authors do so by introducing the concept of organizational irony to the literature on how to manage competing logics, and analyze a collaborative cultural project encompassing actors subjected to competing institutional logics.

The case study is built on qualitative data from in-depth interviews, newspaper articles and observations.

The authors describe and analyze a cultural project encompassing actors subjected to competing institutional logics and show how they responded to institutional pressures in their environment with the use of organizational irony. Thereby, the actors could collaborate with actors subjected to a competing institutional logic and still maintain adherence to their respective institutional logic.

Most studies of how to manage competing logics asserts that one logic will prevail over a competing one, either through “battles” or gradual dominance (Reay and Hinings, 2009). This study supports and adds to Reay and Hinings’ (2009) finding that actors also can collaborate and maintain adherence to their respective logic under such circumstances. In particular, it supports two identified mechanisms of how this can be achieved, namely, to separate decisions and to jointly innovate in experimental sites. It also adds to these mechanisms by showing that this can be done through the use of organizational irony. The authors only study one cultural project in one organizational field. It remains unclear if these findings are common in other cultural projects or in other organizational field, and the authors therefore encourage other researchers to extend or challenge the findings of this study.

The authors believe that the analysis and findings can be useful for politicians to take into account and address either to minimize the risk of organizational irony or on the contrary encourage it as a source of reflexive critique of society and cultural politics. The authors also believe that the response of organizational irony to institutional pressures broadens the acting space of cultural actors, provide media and critics with an analytical tool to analyze and deconstruct practices that otherwise would risk to be silenced or neglected. Finally, the authors believe that an analysis of organizational irony has the potential to make people attend to contradictions and multiple meanings in the artworks under study in a novel way.

The paper provides an intriguing and complex empirical case to demonstrate how actors manage competing logics in an organizational field through the production of organizational irony. The authors believe that its theoretical contributions and practical implications can inspire future research on how paradoxes can be managed through the use of organizational irony in other projects and organizational fields.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on co-creative approaches for place innovation in an Arctic town, based on the relocation of Kiruna’s city center in northern Sweden. Three cases of co-creative innovation processes in Kiruna are investigated and compared: an R&D project about local perceptions and visions of attractive urban environments; an R&D project about norm-creative design principles for inclusive and attractive urban design; and an R&D project about cross-industrial synergies for city center attractiveness.

The study’s research design encompasses a comparative and participatory approach. The comparative approach implies investigation and comparison of three cases of co-creative innovation processes in Kiruna. The participatory approach implies joint development of new knowledge by researchers and local actors. The data consists of participatory observations of workshops and qualitative interviews with local actors.

The study reveals that the studied processes have harnessed the city center relocation as an opportunity to make Kiruna more attractive to residents and visitors, by using the co-creative approaches of Living Lab, Now-Wow-How and Norm-creative design. These approaches have enabled experts and local actors to jointly identify excluding patterns and norms in the relocation process and to envision inclusive and attractive (re-)configurations and (re-)conceptualizations of the future Kiruna.

The results add to the academic strand of inclusive urban transformation, by providing insights into co-creative approaches for re-imagining an Arctic town in times of industrial and social change. New insights are provided regarding how the geographical, industrial and cultural identity of an Arctic town can be harnessed to envision new configuration, content and communication that is attractive and accessible for a diversity of residents and visitors.

The results highlight the potential to harness Arctic and rural characteristics in the promotion of urban attractiveness and public well-being, especially when combined with co-creative identification and transformation of excluding norms and patterns.

The results provide new insights into how co-creative approaches may facilitate innovative and inclusive renewal of towns and cities in the Arctic and beyond.