Dis/organizing Co-production: Liminal spaces haunted by the spirit of formal organizing

Increasingly, Western public organizations engage in political calls for co-production, where volunteers contribute to the development and implementation of welfare services (Pestoff, 2019; Sandvin, Bjørgo, Hutchinson, & Johansen, 2011). Scholars, managers, and politicians alike argue that collaboration with volunteer-based organizations and voluntary individuals has the potential to improve the quality and effectiveness of their innovations in welfare services (Bergmann, 2018; Boyle & Harris, 2009). However, when volunteers are invited inside welfare organizations, such as schools, kindergartens, and nursing homes, they bring with them unpredictability into the organizations they enter in that their actions are hard to control (la Cour, 2014).