Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments September 14, 2011 erstellt
Description:
The notion of working across boundaries continues to receive attention from scholars and practitioners of public policy, administration and management. In recent times, much emphasis has been placed on notions of inter-organisational, inter-jurisdictional and inter-sectoral working and a range of terms have emerged to capture this phenomenon: horizontal coordination, joined-up government, collaboration, whole-of-government, holistic government, collaborative governance and so on. However, there is a core element that binds these various manifestations – the notion that we must traverse boundaries to achieve goals. Most of the post-New Public Management (NPM) models which have emerged over the last decade or so have put the notion of working across boundaries front-and-center: the New Public Service model articulated by Denhardt and Denhardt (2000) focuses on collaborative structures and shared leadership; the New Public Governance model set out by Osborne (2006) includes a notion of inter-organisational management, inter-dependent agents and on-going relationships; there is a strong relational, collaborative thread through the Public Value Management approach articulated by Stoker (2006); and Halligan’s (2007) work on Integrated Governance demonstrates that new models of governing place horizontal collaborative, boundary-spanning ways of operating at their centre. Indeed Kelman (2007) has argued that the topics of collaboration across government agencies (‘connect the dots’) and between government, private and non-government organisations (networks, or collaborative governance) are the “most-discussed questions involving the performance of public institutions and achievement of public purposes” (p.45). In this paper we provide a synoptic overview of the literature on working across boundaries as a means of ordering the field on four key questions. First, what do we mean by the notion of working across boundaries? Second, why has this emerged – what is the imperative for this phenomenon? Third, what does working across boundaries involve – what are the forms and configurations? And, finally we identify a series of critical enablers and barriers which help us to understand how this works (or not). In doing so, we seek to open up a discussion on the enduring puzzles and tensions as they relate to working across boundaries