Mats Fred

Main research areas

• The organization of public sercotr/services
• Public sector innovation
• Projectification and temporary forms of organization
• The organization of knowledge, expertize and learning
• Political- and Organizational Ethnography

Current research

My research aims to increase our understandings of the organization of the public sector - with a particular focus on reforms initiatives and what broadly can be defined as public sector innovation. Much of this work is carried out in temporary and "experimental" forms of organization and in my research I try to understand how this work is enacted in practice and who the actors and coalisions of actors are that push this development.

As an example, for more than 10 years I have followed the work with social investments (and more recently also social impact bonds) in Swedish municipalities and regions, a phenomenon that generated a plethora of projects and project financing systems but also created new roles, actors and coalitions . Through this type of studies, we get an insight into how the public sector is changing and what the driving forces behind such change are.

Another example is my studies of public transport and the development of traveling apps.  When large public actors go from procuring off the shelf products to building their own capacity and develop "in-house", both the internal organization and the relationship with citizens (intended travelers) and other "mobility actors" (electric scooters, rental bike systems, etc.) are affected.