Grassroots niches transforming cities toward post-growth futures: A case study of the collaborative economy in Gothenburg, Sweden

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Grassroots niches transforming cities toward post-growth futures A case study of the collaborative economy in Gothenburg, Sweden

Master student: David Enarsson

Supervisors: Sara Borgström (KTH) & Jennifer Hinton (SRC)

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Cities drive some of the most urgent sustainability challenges that societies face today, including inequality, resource consumption and climate change. Meanwhile, economic growth is increasingly being viewed as a challenge for sustainable development, generating a call for post-growth transformation. In recent years, the notion of a sharing economy has spread to cities across the globe and has been adopted as a solution for addressing multiple urban sustainability challenges. The sharing economy is often associated with multinational corporations such as Airbnb and Uber, however, there is a parallel movement of emerging social practices. This study investigates the case of the multi-actor sharing economy in Gothenburg, Sweden, in order to assess the capacity of an emerging grassroots movement to contribute to economic transformation towards a post-growth model. The findings

demonstrate how the grassroots movement show potential for radical change as they adopt and replicate goals and visions aligning with post-growth transformations. Further, the results show how the movement is reconfiguring urban governance relations through i)

transformative leaders and ii) intermediary organizations enabling cross-sectorial actor relations to emerge. However, the findings also point to emerging risks of disempowerment and limited capacity of grassroots which induce three policy suggestions to strengthen the transformative capacity of the movement. These are to i) organize multi-actor exercises that foster collective visions, ii) support the development of co-operative business models for grassroots, and iii) establish a Community Support Centre. The study concludes that Gothenburg is an example of a type of sharing economy with potential for post-growth transformation.

Keywords: transformative capacity, urban grassroots niches, transformations, post-growth, commons, collaborative economy

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List of tables:

Table 1. Macro trends of the sharing economy and implications for post-growth transformations

Table 2. The characteristics of initiatives in the Smart map Table 3. List of actors and projects covered in the study

Table 4. The goals and societal problems driving grassroots initiatives Table 5. Summary of phases for the collaborative economy

List of Figures:

Figure 1. Conceptual model of the multi-level perspective for economic paradigms Figure 2. Power in transitions framework

Figure 3. The Smart map

Figure 4. Overview of data collection

Figure 5. An emerging space of civic-public relations in Gothenburg

Figure 6: The emergence of the collaborative economy in two chronological phases

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1. Introduction

For global warming not to not exceed 1.5 °C, there is an urgent need to reduce overall

volumes of production and consumption by moving beyond a model of continuous economic growth (Alfredsson et al. 2018). Post-growth scholars point to the biophysical limits of GDP- growth and question its legitimacy as a measure of human prosperity and well-being

(Meadows & Randers, 1992; Dale, 2012). A post-growth transformation calls for radical shifts to redirect economic activity toward social and ecological goals as opposed to privatized profit and GDP-growth (Hinton & Mclurcan, 2016). Advocates of post-growth have highlighted the need to empower social practices that enable such societal

transformations (Göpel, 2016; Svenfelt et al. 2019). Local civil society-led grassroots initiatives may play an important role in bringing about such transformations as they experiment with innovative and place-based solutions that range across multiple complex social-ecological-technological systems (McCormick et al. 2013; Wolfram, 2018). Such local initiatives, or grassroots niches, are an underexplored field of research in which little is known about how initiatives network and to what extent grassroots actors play a

transformative role (Smith & Seyfang, 2013; Frantzeskaki, 2016). This calls for research investigating context-specific strategies to promote sustainable development by enhancing the transformative capacity of such initiatives (Wolfram et al. 2019). The potentially

transformative role of grassroots point to the need for new modes of governance, not only in terms of empowerment, but also for sustained intermediary coordination which balance initiative autonomy while bridging levels and sectors (Borgström, 2019).

A contemporary trend that involve grassroots niches is the emergence of different types of sharing economies in an ongoing global shift toward an economy in which products and services are being shared among peers (Shareable, 2017). While the sharing economy initially promised more sustainable, inclusive and just societies, the emergence of platform capitalism, the gig-economy and the on-demand economy are leading to corporate co-optation of the idea (Martin, 2016). A well-known example is the growth of companies such as Uber and Airbnb, which have had disruptive effects in cities such as precarious working conditions or the inflation of rental prices (Acquier et al. 2017). This dominant, corporate pathway is often less about “sharing” as a way of making use of common resources, than about sharing

commercial relationships with others and providing continuous production and consumption

for profit-driven companies (Dreyer et al. 2017). However, in contrast to this dominant

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trajectory, the sharing economy has been proposed as a means for generating the urban commons of the 21th century (Kostakis & Bauwens, 2014; Bradley & Pargman, 2017).

Civically led, purpose-driven community initiatives or platform co-operatives have formed a counter-movement of transformative sharing practices that involves a shift in power and social relations through practices driven by social purpose (McLaren & Agyeman, 2015;

Frenken, 2017 Shareable, 2017). This study aims to investigate such an emerging grassroots movement using a post-growth transformation lens.

1.1 Research objectives

The main research objective is to discuss the capacity of the grassroots movement to

contribute to post-growth transformations and to highlight opportunities, and challenges, for the enactment of change on the ground. In order to investigate the potential for post-growth transformation, the study investigates modes of sharing that go beyond economic

transactions. This led the study to the collaborative economy of not-for-profit grassroots initiatives in Gothenburg, Sweden. To serve these objectives, two research questions guide the study. The first research question was aimed to capture the goals, visions, strategies and challenges facing the multiple actors engaged in Gothenburg’s collaborative economy, in order to identify factors that empower or disempower transformative change. The second question was aimed at understanding how the collaborative economy has developed over time looking at shifting roles and relationships between the grassroots movement and the local government.

1. How are actors involved in the collaborative economy in Gothenburg articulating goals, visions, strategies and challenges for such an economy? What are the differences and similarities between actors at different levels in relation to post- growth transformations?

2. What conditions or processes have enabled the emergence and persistence of the

grassroots collaborative economy movement in Gothenburg over the years?

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2. Theoretical framework

2.1 A multilevel perspective on transformations

A transformation refers to the process of systemic change leading up to fundamental qualitative changes in a social system (Loorbach, 2017). A post-growth transformation involves such a systemic shift beyond GDP-growth as the end goal of economic activity (Göpel, 2016). The study draws from transformation theory, which has been adapted for the post-growth and grassroots scope. Transformation theory is conceptualized according to a multi-level perspective consisting of a functional aggregation of the niche, regime and landscape levels (Geels, 2011). The regime is the dominant configuration of rules, structures, actors and practices (Avelino & Rotmans, 2009). Nested within the regime are niche

practices conducted by actors that form shadow networks providing alternative ways of doing which deviate from the regime (Olsson et al. 2006). The niche-level provides seeds for systemic change through small networks of actors that support novelties on the basis of visions. A niche is defined as the spaces in which actors develop alternative practices that deviate from the regime (Avelino & Rotmans, 2009). The landscape-level consists of the deeper structuring of lower level developments making up the wider context for the lower levels, which influence niche and regime dynamics (Geels, 2011).

This study adopts Göpel’s (2016) social-ecological-technological-systems perspective (SETS) on transformations by making the assumption that more efficient technologies and economic incentives is not going to be enough for sustainability transformations. A SETS- perspective treats the purpose of change as a crucial leverage point that bridges radical and incremental change. The theory of radical incremental change states that transformations may occur incrementally through step-by-step processes which may accumulate into stable

trajectories through actors declaring a radical purpose of change which diverges from the original system state (Meadows, 2008; Göpel, 2016). Transformative change does not necessarily have to entail systemic struggles between niches and regimes but could entail more fluid pathways in which regimes grant resources to niche innovations (Schot & Geels, 2007; Avelino, 2017). Fig. 2 describes the multi-level perspective for post-growth

transformations, where the leverage point of radical purpose declaration is found on the

mind-set (meta) level.

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Figure 1: Conceptual model of the multi-level perspective for economic paradigms (Göpel

2016 p. 48)

2.2 Grassroots niche formations

A growing body of literature is looking at the role of grassroots movements for sustainability transformations (Smith, 2006; Seyfang & Smith, 2007; Ornetzeder & Rohracher, 2013;

Seyfang & Longhurst, 2013). Grassroot initiatives are “networks of activists and

organizations generating novel bottom-up solutions for sustainable development” (Seyfang &

Smith, 2007: 585), also referred to as “grassroots niches” (Wolfram, 2018). Grassroots niches

have been shown to follow conventional niche formation processes in terms of requiring i)

shared expectations, ii) networking and iii) social learning (Geels, 2011). However, there are

some particular requirements for grassroots empowerment to occur (Wolfram, 2018). For

grassroots the spaces that enable innovative practices (niches) are not abstract entities but

concrete places in the physical environment of cities. The availability of such protected

spaces from the regime is a crucial necessity for grassroots empowerment (Dobernig & Stagl,

2015).

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Successful grassroots empowerment requires intermediary actors, which through personal interactions mediate gaps between grassroots initiatives and authorities in terms of trust, skills or language (Wolfram, 2018). Intermediaries are independent organizations or individuals that act in close proximity to the grassroots initiatives (Wolfram, 2018).

Intermediary actors redefine social roles to allow forms of governance which are inclusive to grassroots and such actors may emerge when grassroots consider themselves a part of a community with collective interests. These actors play a critical role for grassroots niche formations, which is “the process through which intermediary actors distill lessons from grassroots practices and offer transferable knowledge to others, who re-interpret and apply it to their contexts” (Wolfram, 2018 p.12). Through a grassroots niche formation, the grassroots innovations are diffused beyond the local scale through intermediaries abstracting knowledge and fostering experimental social learning (Geels & Deuten, 2006). Grassroots niches form through spatially embedded social struggles, which may lead to selective adoptions of these by regime actors, as such grassroots may receive resources from the regime by formally or informally participating in governance structures (Wolfram, 2018).

Grassroots are sensitive to external control due to their intrinsic or social drivers, and they tend to favor peer-to-peer knowledge dissemination rather than aggregation or

standardization of their activities (Seyfang & Longhurst, 2013). For these reasons, grassroots niche diffusions showcase great degrees of diversity, as grassroots experiment with solutions that range across multiple social-ecological-technical systems (Wolfram, 2018). A grassroots niche formation can be sequenced into phases going from i) isolated initiatives (local phase) ii) first exchanges of experiences among initiatives (inter-local phase) iii) increasing

aggregation of knowledge across initiatives (trans-local phase) toward iiii) consolidation of a robust niche that coordinates local projects and exerts a strong influence on the regime (global phase) (Geels & Deuten, 2006).

While intermediary organizations play a key role for diffusing grassroots innovations,

individuals acting as institutional entrepreneurs or transformative leaders play important roles

for transformation processes (Wolfram, 2016). Transformative leadership includes changing

discourses and fostering co-production knowledge processes (system awareness, foresight,

experiments). In contrast, an institutional entrepreneur is someone playing breaking with

institutionalized practices and driving the adaptation of an alternative one, focusing on rules

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and regulations to leverage resources at a meso scale of regimes (Battilana et al. 2009;

Moore, Riddell & Vocisano, 2015).

2.3 Transformative capacity for post-growth

Transformative capacity is a qualitative measure for an emergent property that reflects the attributes of urban stakeholders, their interactions and the context in which they are

embedded. Wolfram (2016, p. 126) define transformative capacity as “the collective ability of the stakeholders involved in urban development to conceive of, prepare for, initiate and perform path-deviant change toward sustainability within and across multiple complex systems that constitute the cities they relate to”. The measure represents the collective power to change and arises from empowered actors with the ability of modifying the rules governing interpretations of who gains access to resources. Capacity is understood as “the ability of individuals, organizations and societies to shape their development and adapt to changing circumstances” (Wolfram, 2016, p. 122).

While transformative capacity represents the power to change, there are different types of powers exercises and resource types. Avelino (2017) elaborates on the role of different resource types (mental human, artifactual, natural or monetary) and how they connect to power exercises (capacities) in transformations. Power is here interpreted as the “(in)capacity of actors to mobilize resources and institutions to achieve a goal” (Avelino, 2017, p. 507).

The power or (in)capacity to do something is the ability to mobilize resources based on an individual’s availability of i) access to resources ii) strategies to mobilize such resources.

Empowerment is the “process through which actors gain the (in)capacity to mobilize

resources and institutions to achieve a goal” (Avelino, 2017 p. 512). However, sheer access to

resources does not per-se imply empowerment, rather an empowerment process depends on

an individual’s willingness or ability to mobilize resources (Avelino & Rothmans, 2011). For

grassroots initiatives, intrinsic motives are common, while actors external to the initiatives

may have extrinsic motivations (Seyfang & Smith, 2013). Intrinsic motivation refers to

behavior that is driven by internal rewards, such as positive experiences derived directly from

an activity or from interacting with others (Avelino, 2017), whereas extrinsic motivations

mean that action is prompted by factors such as supervision, rewards or punishment by

others. The extent to which an individual is intrinsically motivated (empowered) may depend

on them having a sense of competence, impact, control, and meaning in their activities. For

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the reasons outlined above, well-intended empowerment attempts may result in paradoxical effects of empowerment efforts (Avelino, 2017).

To the discussion on the multi-level-perspective, Avelino (2017) adds that there are different types of power exercises (capacities) through which the agency of a niche may be constrained by the regime. This occurs through regimes favoring moderate niches which entail small tweaks to the dominant system conditions. Moderate niches indicate reinforcive power in a system, defined as “the capacity of actors to reinforce and reproduce existing structures and institutions” rather than to transform them (Avelino, 2017, p. 508). In contrast, radical niches may coexist in parallel to moderate ones. Radical niches indicate transformative potential in a system, i.e. the capacity to eventually develop into renewed or reconfigured structures and institutions, by altering or replacing existing ones. Radical and moderate niches hold innovative capacity defined as “the capacity to create new types of resources” through

mobilizing mental, human, artifactual, natural or monetary resources (Avelino, 2017, p. 509).

However, for a niche to have transformative capacity, a niche-regime space must first open

up. Such a space is defined as “a niche that has grown powerful enough to gain a number of

new characteristics” (Avelino, 2017, p. 510). Figure 2 show such interplay between dominant

and alternative ways of doing and thinking.

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In terms of transformative capacity, the power to change is in this study referring to the capacity to change toward a post-growth trajectory of the economic paradigm. The dominant paradigm setting the deeper structures of the niche and regime levels is the for-profit

economic paradigm (Bollier, 2014). Within this paradigm, the purpose of the economy is market exchange and GDP-growth achieved through ever growing profit, productivity gains and efficient allocation of resources (Göpel, 2016). This dominant economic paradigm represents an economic system in crisis in which exponential GDP-growth threatens the social and biophysical limits of the systems that form the biophysical basis for human well- being (Meadows, 1972; Easterlin, 1974; Jackson, 2009; Raworth, 2017). A sustainable post- growth economy requires a reduction of the total amount of production and consumption in

Figure 2: Power in transitions framework (Avelino, 2017. p. 511). Radical refers to power

exercise that challenges dominant macro-trends and supports countertrends. Radical niches

exercise innovative power that challenge dominant macro-trends and strengthens counter-

macro trends. Moderate refers to power exercise that reproduces and goes along with

dominant macro trends, moderate niches go along with dominant macro trends and are

therefore synergistic with reinforcive power.

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societies (Dale, 2012; Van den Bergh & Kallis, 2012). This is achieved by redirecting the purpose of economic activity toward serving social and environmental ends rather than profit (Göpel, 2016; Svenfelt et al. 2019). For this, a post-growth transformations perspective state that not-for-profit enterprises driven by social or ecological purposes need to replace the for- profit economy (Hinton & Mclurcan, 2016).

A post-growth counter-movement to the dominant economic system is that of the commons paradigm, which entails civically led movements of purpose-driven practice. In the

common’s paradigm, the purpose of the economy is directed toward the creation and

maintenance of the “commons” through commoners practicing alternative ways of doing. The transformative practice of “commoning” occurs in the intersection of formal marketplaces and governmental institutions and involves the creation of values which are not accounted for in the GDP-economy (Ostrom, 1990; Iaione, 2016; Bollier, 2014). Within this alternative paradigm, the purpose of the economy is focused on use-value, common-wealth, sustainable livelihoods and complementarity of enterprise (Bollier, 2014).

These paradigms are dynamically reflected in the parallel macro-trend trajectories of the sharing economy. The for-profit paradigm through platform capitalism and the on-demand and gig economy are moderate niche-regime interactions reinforcing the dominant trajectory of the sharing economy (Martin, 2016; Frenken, 2017; Acquier et al. 2017). In contrast, the commoning movement’s purpose driven peer-to-peer sharing represents a radical niche holding potential transformative power. The sharing economy can thus be considered a trend whose practices hold innovative power, meaning the capacity to create new types of

resources, but whose transformative capacity depends on the ways through which the

innovative power relates to the larger-scale system conditions (Wolfram, 2016; Avelino,

2017). Table 1 summarizes these conflicting macro-trends for the sharing economy to show

their implications for post-growth transformations.

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Table 1: Macro trends of the sharing economy and implications for post-growth

transformations (Based on Bollier 2014, p.180-181 & Avelino 2017)

Macro trends For-profit economic paradigm

Commons paradigm

Reflection in contemporary macro-trends of the sharing economy

Platform capitalism, on- demand and gig-

economy

Commons-based peer production, collaborative commons, civically led social movements

What is the purpose of the economy?

Market exchange, GDP growth through profit accumulation

Use value, common-wealth, sustainable livelihoods, complementarity of enterprise

Strategy to

safeguard resources

Resource efficiency and productivity

Strengthening social relations for assuring fair shares and sustainable use of resources

Who are the change agents?

State or market actors Civically led and diverse distributed networks of citizens

Knowledge production

Knowledge is scarce and can be bought or sold

P2P-networks, free and open source, knowledge is considered a common good

Implications for post-growth transformations

Reinforcive power (reinforcing the dominant trajectory of the sharing economy)

Transformative power (may have

the ability of altering or replacing

existing rules and norms)

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3. Methodology

3.1 Case study approach

To gain insights of the transformative capacity of the collaborative economy grassroots movement in Gothenburg, a case study approach was adopted. Case studies are a common approach used to study particular situations in depth, while also narrowing down broad research topics (Yin, 2011). A case study entails a holistic research approach aimed to understand the complex relationships between factors operating in a specific social setting, rather than to look at isolated factors. The approach relies on the core assumption that a few cases are sufficient to explain and discuss more general phenomenon. The city of Gothenburg was selected as a critical case as it represents an outstanding example of a city that has a rich variety of grassroots sharing initiatives, in a context where there has been increasing

involvement of the municipality for supporting a collaborative economy. Making the selected city-region a well-suited case for an empirical investigation of the chosen subject.

3.2 Case study site: Gothenburg, Sweden

Gothenburg is the second largest city in Sweden, it currently holds 599 011 inhabitants and is located at the south-western coast of the country. The city is home to a variety of place-based and not-for-profit civil society-led grassroots initiatives. The historical drivers of this have included a favorable political climate including high levels of political acceptance and a tradition of socialistic grassroots movements, which have fostered collaborations between local government and civil society (Jonsson, 2017; Sharing city, 2018). Sweden has a long history of strong civil society engagement and organizations belonging to the third sector.

Currently half of the adult population is working voluntarily for fifteen hours every month, the value of this work has been estimated to be 131 billion SEK (Eriksson et al. 2019). The environmental policy context in Gothenburg has a strong consumption focus through strategic objectives aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions from consumption by 75% per person by 2035, as well as to reduce household-generated waste by 30% by 2030 (Göteborg stad, 2014).

3.3 Background: The collaborative economy in Gothenburg

In Gothenburg, the “sharing economy” to a large extent consist of grassroots initiatives

referred to as the “collaborative economy” containing initiatives that have adopted sharing as

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a practice of bartering, lending, renting, gifting or swapping things or services (Botsman &

Rogers, 2011; Sulkakski, 2018). “Collaborative Economy Gothenburg” (CEG) is a grassroots initiative that originally emerged from multiple grassroots sharing initiatives meeting in 2013, starting out as a Facebook group (pers.comm. CEG). In 2014, the municipality of Gothenburg was invited to an event organized by CEG bringing together initiatives and municipality officials. These meetings led up to a civic-public partnership between CEG and the municipality, where the municipality supported the development of a digital map of grassroots sharing initiatives in Gothenburg. The map is called the “Smart map” and was launched in 2016, see Fig. 4. CEG has since then been advocating the value of grassroots initiatives and adopted a sensitivity toward grassroots needs while aiming at facilitating dialogue between civic, public and private sectors (CEG). The municipality sees potential for a collaborative economy to address social and environmental sustainability issues, and support for this has been included in the budgetary policy document annually since 2015 (Göteborg stad, 2014).

Figure 3: The Smart map: A digital platform showing grassroot initiatives belonging to the

collaborative economy

The map includes a variety of grassroots initiatives and urban common spaces in the city such

as public gardens. The majority of the initiatives have emerged in a bottom-up manner from

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civil society, and there are few private or profit-driven initiatives belonging to the collaborative economy in the city (Sulkakoski, 2018). Table 2 summarizes the practices, organizational forms of grassroots initiatives and the criteria set by CEG for the different types of initiatives shown in the map.

Table 2: The characteristics of initiatives in the Smart map

Smart map characteristics

Description

Social practices

Gifting, lending, renting, swapping things or services, repairing, do-it-yourself

What is being shared?

Knowledge, food, mobility, things, space

Organizational

forms of grassroots initiatives

Not-for-profit associations (n=13) Economic associations (n=5) Private company (n=1) Municipality projects (n=3)

Criteria to be a part

of the map

*Open for everyone

*Free or not-for-profit

*Have local community

*Advocate access above ownership or urban commons

*Promote renting, sharing, swapping, borrowing, not buying or selling

*Facilitate peer-to-peer interactions (non-compulsory)

*Small-scale (non-compulsory)

The municipality has also increasingly been involved with running and piloting their own projects. A pilot project is a multi-purpose neighborhood sharing and repair hub “Fixoteket”

(2017-2019). In 2018, in a response to a citizen’s proposal from the grassroots movement, Gothenburg became a participant of the ongoing national innovation program “Sharing Cities Sweden” (2018-2020), a nationally-funded project aimed at testing and developing sharing economies in four Swedish cities.

3.4 Data collection and analysis

A mixed-methods approach was employed which included semi-structured interviews

matched with cross-referencing data from websites, policy documents and grassroots

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3.4.1 Literature overview

Grey literature related to the collaborative economy in Gothenburg were reviewed in order to understand the policy context and included municipality policy documents and available grey literature on the ongoing SCG innovation program. These documents were used to gain a better contextual understanding of the municipality role, by looking for policy support and funding allocations. An organized mapping of the grassroots initiative’s activities,

organizational types and mission statements was also conducted to better understand the initiatives in the Smart map. This was used for the sampling process and for cross-checking and triangulation purposes (Bryman, 2012). The websites or mission statements of the interviewees were used to prepare for the interviews and to cross-check data.

3.4.2 Semi-structured interviews

The conducted interviews were qualitative and semi-structured ranging from 40-60 minutes.

The interviewees were selected on the basis of generic purposive sampling informed by the research questions with the goal of capturing a bird’s eye view of the local government role as well as the perspective of grassroots initiatives (Bryman, 2012). The sampling contexts for interviewee selection were i) grassroots initiatives from the “Smart map”, ii) municipal representatives and real-estate partners from the municipality-led project’s “Fixoteket” and iii) “Sharing City Gothenburg” (SCG). The selection of interviewees was based on their roles as founders, project leaders or sustainability strategists as well as their willingness and

availability. These types of roles were selected due to their likelihood of having an opinion on the topic, as such individuals often hold leadership or change-making positions.

The themes guiding the interview questions were i) background and role ii) goals, visions, strategies, challenges iii) social networks. The interview guides can be found in Appendix 5.

Participation in the interviews was voluntary and each interviewee was given the choice to

select the degree of anonymity that they would like in the final thesis. The interviewees were

also informed that their anonymity could not be guaranteed due to the study looking into

networks of known initiatives. An ethical review was completed prior to the fieldwork, this

can be found in Appendix 7. The interview sample comprised of fourteen interviewees with

grassroot initiatives (N=6), civil society NGOs (N=2), real-estate companies (N=4) and local

government officials (N=2). See Fig. 5 for overview.

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Figure 4: Overview of data collection

3.4.3 Data collection limitations

The limitations in terms of validity and biases are as follows. First, the findings are based on a small sample of grassroots initiatives selected through generic purposive sampling that may have been subject to personal bias from the researcher. Second, the context specific nature of grassroots initiatives may limit the external validity of the findings in that different cities may face entirely different challenges. Third, the findings may be based on subjective

interpretations from the researcher in terms of what was more or less important, especially in terms of historical data. Fifth, two separate interview guides were used to steer the interviews for niche and regime actors, although they had the same themes, this may have affected the outcome of the interviews. See Appendix 3 for elaboration on data limitations and biases.

3.4.4 Data analysis

The semi-structured interviews were transcribed, and a systematic reduction of data was

undertaken through qualitative coding using the software Nvivo12. A thematic coding

approach was conducted based on the study’s research questions, informed by the theoretical

framework. Aligned with the research questions, the primary units of analysis were the

contextual conditions for grassroots emergence and the relationships between the actors

included in the study (Wolfram et al. 2019). The ontological and epistemological approach is

found in Appendix 2. For the first research question, the interviews were coded according to

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inductively derived to construct a chronological narrative of how the context of the

collaborative economy has shifted in Gothenburg. The coding process followed successive abductive rounds in which the data was iterated and connected to the theoretical framework (Bryman, 2012). Evidence backing up the findings can be found in Appendix 6.

The theoretical framework was used to inform the analytical framework in the following

ways. First, looking for actors’ goals and visions aligning with a radical common’s oriented

(post-growth) versus a moderate (growth based/for-profit) collaborative economy. Second,

identifying the nature of niche and niche-regime relationships by looking for actor roles of

intermediaries, institutional entrepreneurs and transformative leaders. Third, looking at

strategies and challenges of actors to identify (dis)empowerments toward radical or moderate

change. For the empirical purposes the study, Avelino & Wittmayer’s (2016) multi-actor

perspective was adopted, where the niche-level was defined as the innovative spaces held by

grassroots initiatives and intermediary organizations. The regime level was defined as the

municipality and real-estate actors representing the dominant regime configurations, showing

increasing involvement and interest for a collaborative economy. The landscape level was

defined as that of the exogenous dominant and counter macro-trends of the sharing economy

and the actor’s relationships to the larger scale system conditions reflected in the for-profit

and commons paradigms. The statements of the real-estate actors in the results mostly refer to

the urban planning development project “Masthuggskajen” which is a part of the municipality

led “Sharing City Gothenburg” (SCG) project. This project was their first encounter with the

ideas of the collaborative economy. Table 3 presents the actors included in the study, in the

results the actors are referenced to by their ID.

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Table 3: List of actors and projects covered in the study.

ID Actors Role played in

the results section

Niche or regime

Description

SCG1

&

SCG2

Municipality coordinators

“Sharing city Gothenburg” (SCG)

Institutional entrepreneurs (N=2)

Regime Sharing city Gothenburg (SCG) is a national innovation programme for testing and developing a sharing economy in four Swedish cities (2017- 2020). In Gothenburg, the project gathers 15 stakeholders ranging across grassroots initiatives to municipality and real-estate actors. Real-estate actors are included due to a part of the project being to develop sharing in a future urban development area called “Masthuggskajen”

AS Älvstranden Municipality real-estate partner in SCG

Regime A municipality owned real-estate developer in charge of coordinating the development of a sharing economy in “Masthuggskajen”

RB Riksbyggen Real-estate partner in SCG

Regime A co-operative real-estate company owned by construction unions, local housing associations and other national co-operative associations EH Elof Hansson Real-estate

partner in SCG

Regime A privately owned real-estate company that invests, owns, develops and manages real-estate in “Masthuggskajen”

CG Municipality representative

“Circular Gothenburg”

Institutional entrepreneur

Regime A municipality run pilot project aimed at developing a circular economy.

FT Framtiden AB Real-estate partner in Fixoteket

Regime The real-estate shareholder group for all the municipality owned real-estate companies in Gothenburg

IO1 Studiefrämjandet Intermediary organization

Niche Sweden’s largest study associations for adult education. They work in the field of non-formal learning by organizing study circles, cultural events, seminars and projects in all of Sweden’s municipalities. Studiefrämjandet is a non-political and non-religious organization which is

democratically run on a non-profit basis (Studiefrämjandent, 2019)

IO2 Hyresgästföreningen Intermediary organization

Niche Sweden’s largest tenant’s association with over half a million members. It was founded in 1915 and has since then grown. Their core mission is to support members with advice and support in their contact with local landlords (Hyresgästföreningen, 2019).

CEG Collaborative Economy

Gothenburg (CEG)

Transformative leadership:

Grassroots initiative

Niche The grassroots initiative who created the “Smart map”. The association aims at facilitating

dialogue across private, public and private sectors on the collaborative economy.

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FB Fritidsbanken Grassroots initiative

Niche A library for sports gear. The initiative lends out a variety of sports gear for free and collects sports gear that would otherwise go to waste.

TL Toy Library Grassroots initiative

Niche A library for toys where you can swap or borrow toys, free and open to everyone.

BK Bike kitchen Grassroots initiative

Niche A place-based repair hub for bikes and a meeting place for biking culture. Large focus on sharing of knowledge about bikes and cycling

SK Solidarity kitchen Grassroots initiative

Niche A food-sharing initiative that collects food that would otherwise go to waste by collecting leftovers from food chains

DL Digidem Lab Grassroots initiative

Niche A hackerspace aimed at teaching about information technology. The initiative support projects develop citizen platforms, workshops, and host hackathons. Focus on technical solutions for the common good.

4. Results

4.1 Goals and visions for a collaborative economy

This section presents findings of the goals and visions by regime and niche actors in terms of radical (commons-oriented) versus a moderate (for-profit oriented) collaborative economy.

The findings show radically visionary goals at the niche level, some of which are shared by the regime, while the regime show less knowledge and fewer visions.

The grassroots initiatives in Gothenburg are driven by social and ecological goals targeting a

range of societal problems, while having core principles such as being free and open to

everyone, shown in Table 4. Municipal actors commonly see the collaborative economy as

something that contribute to the municipality’s policy goals. The municipal goals included

the benefits of more efficient use of resources and the fostering of trust and social justice

(SCG1). For the real-estate partners in the SCG project, the goal was to facilitate more

sustainable lifestyles for the tenants in the planned real-estate development area included in

the project (RB, AS). Several of the project partners also highlighted the potential for

grassroots initiatives to contribute to social cohesion in local neighborhoods (RB, AS,EH,

SCG1).

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Table 4: The goals and societal problems driving grassroots initiatives

Grassroot initiatives

Social purposes Societal problems

identified

CEG

To promote sustainable consumption, create dialogue and collaboration between civil society, public sector and private sector

*Unsustainable consumption

*Increasing economic inequality

Fritidsbanken

To increase people’s access to play and leisure and exercise for health

*Lack of health and leisure

*Climate change

Toy Library

To promote sustainable consumption and waste reduction through the borrowing of toys

*Poison-free play for children

*Unsustainable consumption

*Climate change

Bike kitchen

To be a free and open do-it-yourself

workshop for bikes, focus on knowledge and learning

*Climate change

Digidem Lab

To promote participatory democracy through backing up projects, citizen platforms, lectures, workshops, hackathons

*Income inequality

*Social segregation

*Political extremism

Solidarity

kitchen

To reduce food waste both in households and in food stores. Create a gift economy for food that would otherwise go to waste.

*Consumerism

*Climate change

The grassroots initiatives have a variety of radical visions aligning with the commons

paradigm by describing a future marked by distributed and localized networks of citizen-led

initiatives. These visions include that a collaborative economy will lead to new local meeting

places, which through peer-to-peer interactions foster trust and community cohesion to unite

areas leading up to a safer and more inclusive society (TL, IO2). Several initiatives expressed

visions of how the collaborative economy would grow into being a natural part of society

similarly to that of a library (FB, CEG). The grassroots also expressed visions of future

marked by more value-driven enterprises and citizen-led initiatives, rather than relying on

middle-men in marketplaces such as Uber or Airbnb (CEG). To enable more citizen-led

grassroots initiatives, a vision was that municipality resources are to be allocated to citizen-

led solutions and social enterprises (CEG, SK). Further, visions of more localized and

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decentralized modes of production and consumption were described, where the knowledge of how to repair and take care of things has a higher status (CEG, IO2, SK). Findings that indicate how the grassroots envision radical social changes, a project leader at

Hyresgästföreningen said:

“Currently the collaborative economy is not really seen as a threat to the market economy and capitalism, because it operates under the radar. But in the long-term I think that it will overcome capitalism”

At the regime level, the test-bed coordinator for SCG expressed hoped for new local meeting

places that would create trust, similar to that of the grassroots visions (SCG1). In contrast, the

real-estate regime actors in SCG were somewhat less visionary. Their visions were more

agnostically framed around the collaborative economy being an idea that would contribute to

a more resource-efficient society through increasing access to goods and services by means

other than ownership (AS, EH). The real-estate visions also included subscribing to things

rather than owning them, carpools, bike-pools or having facilities set out for their tenants to

access tools rather to own them (RB, EH). A few times more moderate examples were

mentioned by real-estate actors, through hopes for future business opportunities and the

profitability of sharing, while bringing up examples such as Uber or Airbnb (FT, EH). With

the exception of the project coordinators in SCG, no clear distinctions were made between

radical or moderate types of sharing at the regime level. Overall, the regime involved fewer

visions and less knowledge of the types of initiatives or services a collaborative economy

would entail.

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4.2 The emergence of the collaborative economy

This section shows how the collaborative economy in Gothenburg has emerged and developed over the years by looking at actor roles such as intermediaries, transformative leaders and institutional entrepreneurs.

4.2.1 Introductory capacity phase: Grassroots incubators and transformative leadership

Two crucial conditions have facilitated the emergence of the collaborative economy in Gothenburg: i) grassroot incubators ii) transformative leadership. A primary contextual condition allowing grassroots initiatives to emerge has been the role played by non- governmental civil society organizations having acted as grassroots incubators in close proximity to grassroots initiatives. Two such organizations have been Studiefrämjandet and Hyresgästföreningen from which many of the active grassroots initiatives in Gothenburg originate (SCG2, IO2). These organizations enable the emergence of grassroot initiatives in a number of ways. They work closely with grassroots initiatives, express support for their values and activities by supporting them at an early stage when no other actors are willing to do so. Further, these actors provide grassroots initiatives with resources such as funding or facilities (SCG2). Such initial support was given to the BK initiative by Hyresgästföreningen, who provided them with a facility in 2012 (BK). A former employee at Studiefrämjandet highlighted the role played by such organizations for the grassroots initiatives:

“[Studiefrämjandet] is an actor that has been close to the local scale in terms of values, while also having resources. For example, through providing facilities, or that sees the value of this [grassroots] without measuring it.”

Transformative leadership by the grassroots initiative Collaborative Economy Gothenburg (CEG) has in an introductory phase enabled collective action toward a collaborative

economy. This has elicited grassroots as an alternative pathway to the global macro-trend of

the on-demand and gig-economy. The initial role played by CEG included mobilizing

knowledge from the global scale and adapting those ideas to the specific local grassroots

context of Gothenburg. This knowledge mobilization process was then used to identify what

types of sharing CEG wanted to facilitate in Gothenburg (CEG). CEG also facilitated and

organized lectures, events and meetings at an early stage of the collaborative economy

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enabling collective action. These meetings led to a number of grassroots initiatives building new connections with representatives from the local municipality leading to changed relationships between the actors involved (SCG1). The BK initiative, for example, gained contacts and collaborations with one of the municipality’s administrations (SCG1). In particular, the meetings deepened the relationship between CEG and the municipality, resulting in collaborations on knowledge building and dissemination (CEG). These shifting relationships resulted in a formal partnership built on the realization that CEG and the municipality were both interested in supporting citizen-led grassroots initiatives (CEG). An outcome of the partnership was the development of the Smart Map, a map of the sharing- related grassroot initiatives of the city. The project coordinator for SCG highlighted the importance of CEG in bridging the gap between the municipality and grassroot initiatives:

“We are grateful to have an association like CEG in Gothenburg. They have played an important role for facilitating the local ecosystem of sharing initiatives in the city. Now when other cities contact us for advice, we see that they face different challenges as they lack this type of local association”

4.2.2 Diffusional capacity phase: New municipality role

An initial phase of sense-making and meetings has led to the municipality taking a new role for driving change towards a collaborative economy in Gothenburg. With the civic-public partnership, CEG and the municipality promote and support local grassroot initiatives in the city, rather than multinational companies. This indicates a radical direction of change in Gothenburg, the project coordinator for SCG said:

“In Gothenburg we are more toward the collaborative economy rather than the on-demand economy. Because it has companies that have business models and who get along anyway, it is not them that we need to support (...) this has been clear with the Smart map. We are not promoting multinational companies such as Airbnb and Uber, but we want to showcase the local and small-scale”

The new municipality role is more prominent in terms of supporting and driving change toward a collaborative economy, for example by helping grassroots with social networks within the municipality or facilities from the municipality-owned real-estate companies (CG).

The municipality is also adopting a sensitivity in contact with grassroots in order to not take

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over (SCG1). The new role of the municipality is that of an institutional entrepreneur, coordinating actors, initiating pilot projects, defining best practices, reviewing rules and developing guiding visions (SCG2). A key municipality run pilot project is “Sharing City Gothenburg” (SCG) in which fifteen partners ranging from grassroot initiatives, intermediary organizations to public and private real-estate companies come together to test and develop sharing in a future urban development project “Masthuggskajen”. Through this project certain grassroots initiatives have been introduced and matched with the resources of municipality actors and real-estate companies (SCG1). There are also ongoing attempts to develop co- operative business models and to evaluate the benefits and user experiences of more

established grassroots initiatives (SCG2). This marks a phase of grassroots diffusion, partly facilitated by the municipality's new role. One of the co-founders of CEG has left the association to work in the SCG project, entailing a shifting role due to the collaborative economy having entered a more formal phase:

“In an early phase it was very much about being part of a movement. Now I am rather a practitioner and a facilitator. And instead of me influencing politics, it is now politics deciding what I should do”

In the diffusional phase, the intermediary organizations Hyresgästföreningen and Studiefrämjandet play roles as bridges between the municipality and the grassroots.

Hyresgästföreningen highlighted how the municipality is more prone to collaborate with them due to their organized form, rather than to talk to every initiative individually:

“Now I think Hyresgästföreningen has started to be demanded by municipality actors and real-estate companies who want Hyresgästföreningen as a gathered voice. You would rather talk to someone with an organized form, than to talk to every individual”

In 2018, municipality funding was allocated to replicate the grassroots initiative BK across

Gothenburg. Studiefrämjandent was assigned this task, indicating an initial step toward a new

bridging role, rather than solely acting as a grassroots incubator. Studiefrämjandet also

support new types of grassroots needs, which was illustrated by them organizing a course

about accounting for the BK initiative (BK). The results indicate how roles and relationships

between grassroot initiatives, and the municipality are changing through CEG and

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intermediary organizations positioning themselves in between public and civic sectors. Fig. 5 show these emerging civic-public relationships of collaboration and funding flows.

Figure 5: An emerging space of civic-public relations in Gothenburg. Facilitated by intermediary

organizations (grey) and CEG (yellow) being positioned in between the grassroots initiatives and the

municipality actors and projects (blue and red). I=Grassroots initiatives L=transformative leaders. Own

illustration inspired by Wolfram (2018).

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Fig. 6 present a timeline of how the collaborative economy in Gothenburg has developed from an introductory grassroot incubation phase enabling a context of grassroot flourishment and transformative leadership through the sense-making facilitated by CEG, leading up to a context in which the municipality is an institutional entrepreneur diffusing practices and ideas through grassroots support and pilot projects. The phases are summarized in Table 5.

Figure 6: The emergence of the collaborative economy in two chronological phases. Showing how the

collaborative economy in Gothenburg has gone from a local scale phase toward a trans-local and global scale

in which the niche is putting stronger influence on the regime. Enabled by i) intermediary organizations ii)

transformative leadership. Own illustration, based on Geels & Deuten (2006) and Wolfram (2016)

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Table 5: Summary of phases for the collaborative economy

Phases Introductory capacity phase Diffusional capacity phase

Description

Initial conditions were set for enabling collective action. These were i) intermediary organizations enabling grassroots initiatives ii) transformative leadership by CEG adapting a global scale trend to the local to facilitate new types of meetings between grassroots and municipality

The municipality takes a role as an institutional entrepreneur enabled by the introductory phase. This has led to shifting grassroots-

municipality relations, aggregation of knowledge, new actor

constellations, development of business models and evaluations through municipality pilot projects

Events or

processes

*Intermediary organizations enabling emergence of grassroot initiatives

*Transformative leadership by CEG

*New phase marked by CEG- municipality partnership

*Shifting actor roles and relationships

4.3 Challenges and strategies for a collaborative economy

The strategies and challenges were looked at to uncover signs of grassroots

(dis)empowerment, in order to then discuss whether they are enabled to be transformative.

The results show how grassroots initiatives adopt strategies of replication and learning to spread their ideas, while the regime actors aspire to develop business models, demanding more commercially run initiatives.

The grassroot initiatives in Gothenburg are increasingly networking, experimenting and learning from each other. All of the interviewed grassroot initiatives were showing indications of learning, collaborating or being inspired by other initiatives. Such cross- initiative collaborations or learning occurs through informal peer-to-peer interactions in the physical meeting places made available by the municipality for grassroot initiatives (SK).

Further, the grassroots initiatives were showcasing strategies of replication to spread their

ideas and engage more people in their activities (TL, BK). The replication occurs either

through peer-to-peer knowledge disseminations, through open-source platforms or through

the creation of hand-books (BK, TL, CEG, DL, SK, IO1). At the local scale, the intermediary

organization Hyresgästföreningen plays a key role in facilitating such replication and

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experimentation by setting up a platform for local associations and projects. The project leader said:

“You can make this [collaborative economy] into something larger and more inspiring.

These projects are building an entire system by creating databases and trying methods. Then you can do a copy-paste and scale it based on this”

The results show an increase in grassroot-municipality interactions; however, they also point toward that some grassroots wish to stay disconnected from the municipality. The founder of SK expressed a preference for staying disconnected from the municipality in order to have a larger impact (SK). This shows how partnering with the municipality may not be a desirable goal for grassroots.

The strategies expressed by regime actors in the SCG project was to develop business models for low-paying tenants. Such a strategy was considered crucial for including grassroots initiatives in the new development area, something that the project partners are working on (AS; EH). Strategies were also expressed for mixing not-for-profit initiative with commercial solutions, where real-estate actors expressed that there is a need for taking a next step for the collaborative economy (RB, AS). A project leader at AS said:

“We are in a phase where things have to be tested and then I think that it [sharing economy]

will be able to find its own shape and become self-driving in the future, where the

commercial powers will see the benefits when there is a business model that perhaps is more sustainable”

The challenges facing the grassroots initiatives are that of the sources of funding for those who handle money or are run on a project-funded basis (TL, FB), but also the reliance on human resources due to the fact that grassroots initiatives are run by a few key people (CEG, BK, TL). Further, a consequence of the municipality’s new role has been that some

grassroots face increasing bureaucratic work when they partner or collaborate with the

municipality, work that may result in exhaustion of human resources for the grassroots. This

was illustrated by the BK initiative’s struggle to apply for municipality funds allocated to

replicate their idea across the city:

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“We started small and we did not have a system for how to do accounting because we had been growing. After a while the original system becomes too clumsy and we had a cashier that almost got burnt out. And without the closing books we can’t get the audit report. So now this is blocking us from applying for money from the Social resource management

[municipality administration]”

A challenge facing the municipality as they are increasingly involved with grassroots indicate how tensions or conflicts might emerge through such a process. While the municipality is interested in measuring the impacts of the grassroots to motivate municipality resources set out for grassroots support to politicians, grassroots initiatives may not have the time, ability or willingness to collect such data. This finding showed struggles between, on the one hand, the municipality’s attempts to help grassroots diffusion and, on the other hand, the human resources and intrinsic nature of grassroot initiatives.

When grassroots partner with or collaborate with the municipality, they encounter the

neutrality rules of Swedish municipalities, stating that municipalities cannot support activities which may compete on a market (SCG1). Grassroots initiatives were affected by such rules through municipality evaluations aimed at limiting the borrowing time of items in order for the initiative not to compete with local businesses (FB). A similar challenge was articulated by TL being housed in a municipality-led sharing and repair hub, describing how the initiative had been limited by insurance rules and restrictions not allowing money in the municipality facility, restricting the initiative from selling coffee (TL). The neutrality rules were also brought up as a barrier for facilitating a collaborative economy in the SCG project.

The neutrality rules mean that the municipality is unable to favor specific types of businesses, and so SCG has to be open for all kinds of sharing initiatives, despite the project leaders having an idea about what they want to support (SCG1). A further challenge was that two municipality funding allocations related to the collaborative economy were removed from the budget in 2018/2019 as a result of a political regime shift in the municipality (CG).

A core challenge for the real-estate and municipality partners in the SCG project was the

economic barriers for including not-for-profit grassroots initiatives which are unable to pay

high rents in the new development area. This barrier was expressed by all interviewed project

partners. The municipality owned real-estate company AS said:

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“It is to find economic viability in it, it is easy to say that [sharing initiatives] are creating

value and that they generate benefits which are hard to measure, but it is not easy to show

that this works in the financial books. And for us quite frankly there is a lot of discussion

regarding if we are to allow sharing initiatives to take physical space in our development

area where they will compete with something else that might have the ability to pay a higher

rent, which will make the real-estate business better, and this is a very strong interest.”

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5. Discussion

The aim of this study has been to understand the capacity of the collaborative economy in Gothenburg to transform the economy in a post-growth direction. This has been done by looking at i) how radical versus moderate features are reflected in niche and regime actors (Section 4.1) ii) how the niche has developed over the years (Section 4.2), as well as iii) how the niche is currently forming and being (dis)empowered (Section 4.3). The results show how the grassroots initiative’s radical goals and visions align with a post-growth transformation, some of which are shared at the regime level, while there were also signs of moderate for- profit expectations at the regime level. Further, the results show how transformative

leadership and intermediary organizations have sparked collective action that has led up to a diffusional phase of new actor roles and constellations. The results also indicate signs of grassroots (dis)empowerment, through grassroots initiatives replicating and learning, but also emerging risks of disempowerment, for example related to the fragile human resources of grassroots. The collaborative economy in Gothenburg clearly deviate from the dominant macro-scale trends of the sharing economy, findings which contribute to the literature of civil society as a driver of sustainability transformations (Carmin, Hicks & Beckmann, 2003;

Seyfang & Smith, 2007; Seyfang & Longhurst, 2013; Boyer, 2015). This section discusses the implications for transformative capacity for post-growth. The discussion is structured around enabling and constraining dynamics of change as to how transformative change could continue to occur, while raising risks that may constrain the transformative capacity.

5.1 Enabling change: Radical incremental potential for post-growth

The emerging initiatives in the collaborative economy could be considered radical seeds with incremental potential for post-growth transformations. The grassroots align with the

commons paradigm ways of doing and thinking, see Table 1 (Bollier, 2014). First, they are driven by social purposes addressing a variety of societal problems. For post-growth, the visionary social purposes of the grassroots initiatives are crucial to create a new social contract from which the end goal of economic activities are built upon (Paech, 2017).

Second, the grassroots align with features in the common’s paradigm (Bollier, 2014). Their social goals flip the core purpose of economic activity toward strengthening social relations through trust-building and local peer-to-peer interactions, as opposed to profit-oriented goals.

Other examples include their advocacy for socially-oriented enterprises and core principles of

trust and openness safeguarding commons managed access to rivalrous resources. Further

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illustrating this was their free and open source knowledge production facilitated through peer- to-peer networks, and the advocacy of use-value through caring for and repairing things.

These radically innovative ways of doing and thinking have the potential to alter or replace rules and norms of the for-profit paradigm, showcasing transformative power (Moore et al.

2014; Avelino, 2017). For post-growth transformations, these grassroots fill a crucial function in Göpel’s multi-level perspective, an important role as such mind-sets are a leverage point for radical incremental transformations (Meadows, 2008; Göpel, 2016). Through their activities, the grassroot initiatives generate values which are not accounted for in the GDP- based economy and they do so by creating, maintaining and expanding the sphere of the commons, acting in the intersection of markets and the state (Ostrom, 1990).

The municipality’s goals for a collaborative economy do not seem to explicitly contradict that of the grassroots, rather this speak in favor of ongoing radical incrementalism and the

opening up of a radical niche-regime space enabled by the new municipality role. However, this might be due to that the early stage of the collaborative economy is yet to spark larger niche-regime conflicts. Further, there may be emerging contradictions in the SCG project between the real-estate actors wanting to maximize rent for the real-estate space and that of the radical goals of the grassroots, posing a potential challenge or source of conflict in the future. The differences between the niche and regime do show an inherent paradox in the grassroots visions, in that some tend to counter the institutions that have enabled them in the first place (Wolfram, 2018). The grassroots initiatives do so by calling for municipality resource allocations for a transformation which is primarily led by distributed and

decentralized networks of citizens, rather than by the municipality (Bollier, 2014). Therefore, in light of having uncovered this paradoxical relationship, questions arise as to how such change would unfold and who the primary change agents are in it.

Grassroots niches transforming cities toward post-growth futures: A case study of the collaborative economy in Gothenburg, Sweden