1 Sören Augustinsson Lars Paulsson Ph. D. Human Work Science Development officer, Public health Kristianstad university college Region Västra Götaland Soren.augustinsson@hkr.se lars.paulsson@vgregion.se Sub-theme 18: Pragmatism, Organizing and Learning Collaboration: Balancing on an unsecured association Collaboration between public sectors as Complex organizing and Learning Introduction In an attempt to efficiently make use of public means in the last decades, collaboration has been tested and become increasingly popular within public sectors (Danermark 1997; Danermark 2000; Danermark 1999; Huxham 2010; Hörnemalm 2008; Lindberg 2006; Lindberg 2009; Ohlsson 2008; Taylor 2001). There are many examples of situations in which the actual implementation of political decisions on collaboration have been delegated to civil officials and employees. Collaboration in the form of coordinated health care between units within a public health care system or work rehabilitation of the long-term sick, such as regional social insurance offices, employment offices and social services, are two examples of situations in which collaboration issues become tangible and concrete. Despite good intentions, a number of problems may arise when collaboration is implemented in actual work situations (Huxham 2000; Lindberg 2003; Lindskov 2010; Taylor 2001). This paper focuses on the collaboration in a region where the regional delegate commissioned the Public Health Committee to form sector-integrated health-promoting networks together with other units in the region. The Public Health Committee in turn handed over this assignment to their secretarial office (i.e. the civil officials). However, this commission turned out to cause a number of problems that are addressed in this paper. The decision seems to have been based on the belief that it is easy to start collaboration (Aspegren 2010). No one, at least publically speaking, had thought on the complexity and difficulties that collaboration between units and sector in the region could give rise to in the practical work (Kreiner 1993). This became very apparent in the relations between collaborating participants (Augustinsson 2010; Kreiner 1993). In this paper, it is shown that the processes cannot possibly be controlled or guided by an individual person towards a specific objective or direction. It is a movement, without predetermined objectives, in which collaboration is guided forward through learning in the form of formation of new ideas about the future and previous events (Feldman 2005).