Driving forces for municipal and voluntary interaction: Some causal relationships induced from Swedish data

Public sector organisations and voluntary sector organisations represent different organisational archetypes. All the same, they share two fundamental characteristics. However, in practice interaction seems to be coupled with several problems but the organisations favour interaction as a way of attaining mutual benefits. The aim of this paper is to introduce some hypotheses on factors that influence the conditions of interaction between municipal and voluntary organisations. The hypotheses are induced from data gathered in seven Swedish municipalities and reflect a municipal perspective on interaction. Three hypotheses have been induced from the data; a hypothesis on geographical and/or topical identification as a promotive factor for municipal and voluntary interaction; a hypothesis on the degree of explicitness in the distribution of responsibility of the parties involved; a third hypothesis that rests on the assumption of a positive relationship between the explicitness in the provider-receiver communication and the intensity of municipal and voluntary interaction.