Erika Andersson Cederholm

How and to what extent higher education institutions in Sweden are collaborating with society has been debated in public media and in research. This article highlights the formalisation of the Swedish collaboration policy following a reinforced regulation and political pressures. In the study, official university documents and interviews with university employees at two Swedish universities are analysed. The analysis focuses on the concept of collaboration as a boundary object, shedding light on the ambiguity characterising the formalisation process. The striving for definitions and operationalisation of the concept creates a multitude of specific and local interpretations; of the concept as such, how collaboration competencies should be defined, and how the result of collaboration can be measured. The article draws to a close by a discussion of the potential drawbacks when collaboration practices become too formalistic, and collaboration turns into an end in itself.