Working with Interorganisational Group Dynamics in the Green Transition: Insights from Simulation-Based Leadership Development in the Danish Green Tripartite

Developing green policies and practices that actually work is one of the major challenges facing governments and organisations today. The contribution of this paper is to use systems psychodynamic ideas to explore multi-party collaboration in developing and implementing green policies and practices, and to understand what helps and does not help to sustain such collaboration.

The Danish green transition has evolved over several decades, but the 2024 establishment of the Green Tripartite (Den Grønne Trepart) —an unprecedented collaborative framework between government, agricultural actors, and environmental organizations—marks a new phase in which interorganizational collaboration is not only desirable but structurally required. As the transition involves the restructuring of sociotechnical systems such as agriculture, energy, and local infrastructure, no single actor holds the necessary knowledge, authority, or resources to act alone. This interdependence produces both opportunities and tensions, making the relational dynamics between organizations a central site of inquiry.

This paper examines how interorganizational group dynamics shape the capacity of diverse stakeholders to collaborate effectively in the context of Denmark’s accelerating green transition, drawing on empirical insights from more than 25 simulation-based training sessions and a subsequent leadership development program for the Green Tripartite. The analysis demonstrates how unconscious relational processes, systemic anxieties, and historically embedded patterns of interaction influence the ability of organizations to work together on complex environmental transformation tasks.

Building on a systems-psychodynamic perspective, particularly Sandra Schruijer’s work on multiparty collaboration, the paper explores how groups manage task-related anxieties, defend organizational identities, and navigate the paradox of simultaneous cooperation and competition. Across the 25+ simulation iterations, recurring patterns emerged: defensive postures rooted in sectoral identities, coalition-building as a response to uncertainty, avoidance of conflict disguised as consensus-seeking, and difficulty sustaining a shared task focus under pressure.

Two findings stand out. First, interorganizational anxieties—about influence, political exposure, or technical legitimacy—often displaced attention from the shared task toward protecting organizational boundaries. Second, when participants were able to recognize and work with these dynamics, collaborative leadership and system-oriented followership became possible. These insights informed the design of a leadership program for 25 Green Tripartite project leaders and their managers, strengthening reflective capacity, cross-boundary role clarity, and the ability to hold a collaborative space amid uncertainty.

The paper argues that successful green-transition governance requires more than technical expertise or formal coordination structures. It demands the capacity to understand and work with the psychodynamics of interorganizational collaboration—to recognize how unconscious processes shape behavior, how systemic anxieties manifest, and how leadership can be exercised collectively. By integrating simulation-based learning with systems-psychodynamic theory, the study offers a practice-grounded contribution to organisational and societal transformation.