In this qualitative case study, we
focus on rural municipalities and explore how municipal organization can act
proactively and not just react to changes that are taking place in our society.
In Finland, there is an ongoing reform process, that has been under way for more
than ten years, and it may have an important effect on the role and
responsibilities of municipalities affecting their funding. In our paper,we
integrate literatures on entrepreneurial orientation, co-creation and public
sector entrepreneurship. The municipalities engage in entrepreneurial
activities to proactively answer to their current and future challenges. More
specifically, we recognized both inward bound and outward facing activities.
These are activities focusing on 1) increasing co-creation and collaboration
between different sectors inside the municipal organization, and 2) activities
to increase and enable collaboration between the municipality and its multiple
stakeholders. By bringing real life, contextualized examples of the ways rural
municipalities use entrepreneurial and co-creational activities to navigate in
the increasing austerity and uncertainty, we contribute to the studies in the
intersection of public entrepreneurship and value co-creation.