Factors for collaboration amongst smart city stakeholders: A local government perspective

Abstract

A collaborative ecosystem of diverse stakeholders is seen as critical in smart cities for solving complex public problems and overcoming socio-technical hurdles. However, little is known about the factors that may increase collaboration amongst smart city stakeholders. Through a digital government lens, we first elaborate the nature of multi-stakeholder collaboration in the smart city. Then, we adopt a contingency approach to unpack the factors that affect the intensity of collaboration between the stakeholders in the smart city ecosystem. To characterize the ecosystem, we use the quadruple-helix framework. Through the perspective of the local government, we derive hypotheses on whether certain factors lead to more intensive collaboration, which are tested on a sample of Belgian municipalities. Our findings reveal the importance of smart city strategies for intensifying collaboration between the local government and stakeholders in the ecosystem. Moreover, we also find that for large ecosystems, a smart city manager or department may facilitate collaboration amongst stakeholders. Taken together, our findings indicate that there are certain configurational approaches to increasing collaboration in smart cities, which will depend on the context of a city.