Facilitating conditions for boundary-spanning behaviour in governance networks

Abstract

This article examines the impact of two facilitating conditions for boundary-spanning behaviour in urban governance networks. While research on boundary spanning is growing, there is little attention for antecedents. Combining governance network literature on project management and organizational literature on facilitative and servant leadership, we examine two potential conditions: a facilitative project management style and executive support. We conducted survey research among project managers involved in urban governance networks in order to test these relationships. We found positive relationships between facilitative project management and boundary-spanning behaviour, while executive support indirectly, via facilitative management, contributed to boundary-spanning behaviour.

Building trust in public sector networks: The role of rhetoric and persuasion

“…Dudau, Favotto, & Kominis, ) and, in doing so, contribute to performance and trust building in partnerships (e.g. Van Meerkerk & Edelenbos, ).…”

“…In network settings, rhetoric is used to negotiate the trustworthiness of partners: as Bardach convincingly put it, inter‐organisational relations are ‘a matter of exhortation, explication, persuasion, give and take’ (, p. 238). Public management literature has associated the role of the negotiator and persuader to network brokers and boundary‐spanners (Agranoff, , Agranoff & McGuire, ; Dudau, ; Dudau et al., ; Marques et al., ; Van Meerkerk & Edelenbos, ; Williams, ). Network brokers actively attempt to affect partners’ perceived trustworthiness via rhetoric in the face of partner turnover (Cropper, ; Hudson, Hardy, Henwood, & Wistow, ).…”

Boundary-spanning strategies for aligning institutional logics: a typology

“…The central positioning of boundary spanners enables them to strategically shape perceptions through controlling information and to access various parts of the network. The rapidly expanding scholarship on boundary spanning has recently put more emphasis on the innovative component of boundary spanning: to transform particular institutional arrangements (Van Meerkerk and Edelenbos 2018;Baker, 2008). Boundary spanners are considered to be entrepreneurs and innovators in the sense that they try to link different policy issues and policy streams across boundaries.…”

Selective permeability of boundaries in a knowledge brokering team

“…While such contestation is often triggered by internal struggles for authority, domination and power, it often unfolds in response to external stimuli, such as technological innovation, organizational restructuring or policy change (Allen ; Burri ). The global policy trend towards interprofessional and inter‐organizational collaboration and network forms of governance creates the need for boundary spanning (van Meerkerk and Edelenbos ), that is, actions and behaviours aimed at connecting previously separated practices by negotiating the meaning and terms of the relationship between them, and facilitating the sharing of knowledge across social context (Kislov et al ; Levina and Vaast ; Roberts and Beamish ).…”