Over the last two decades, the question of organizing has been a matter of great interest in many Swedish municipalities and remain so today. What are the ideas behind the way municipalities organize themselves an how are the ideas related to the municipality context? This is th focus of this article, The discussion is based on a broad study of organizing activities in four municipalities. The ideas of organizing identified in the study are analysed in two institutional dimensions related to contextual circumstances. The first covers the way the ideas are influenced by two ways of thinking, termed respectively political and administrative logic. The second dimension covers ´the way the ideas are affected by local and national thinking. We show how these ddimensions influence organizing.