Boundary Organizations Research Articles

Relational Spaces and Value Replacement: Community Involvement at the Gowanus Canal Superfund Site

An unresolved challenge facing organizations, particularly those with a social role such as environmental stewardship, is how to navigate contention between organizational values and operating goals. Research has established that organizational values are commonly displaced as organizational actors struggle with pressing operating goals. Value displacement influences organizational actors’ responses to the local population’s needs. Using the case of the Gowanus Canal Superfund cleanup, this project asks, how can organizational values, once they have been displaced, be put back into place (value replacement)? I argue that, in the case of the Gowanus Canal cleanup, the process of value replacement hinged on a boundary organization that provided the setting for a unique relational space where organizational values could be reconsidered and reenacted. I create a typology of interaction settings and value replacement based on the presence or absence of a boundary organization and relational space. Overall, the research illustrates that despite the pervasiveness of operating goals, organizational actors can draw on an organization’s values to make decisions, based on interaction with the local population. Furthermore, it shows the connection between the space in which organizational actors interact with the local population and the way they deal with organizational values.

Collective action across boundaries: Collaborative network initiatives as boundary organizations to improve ecosystem services governance

In this study we explore the concept of boundary organizations in the context of collaborative network initiatives which aim to achieve collective action to improve ecosystem services governance at landscape scale. We are specifically interested to analyze how the boundary, which exists between actors with mainly economic interests, related to producing provisioning ecosystem services, and actors with mainly ecological interests, related to preserving regulating, cultural, or supporting ecosystem services, can be overcome for collective action. The analysis is based on empirical research conducted in a case study area from Eastern Germany, the Biosphere reserve Spreewald, where two collaborative governance approaches are compared: a citizen foundation and a water management board. For data collection we use face-to-face interviews based on the participatory Net-Map method. For data analysis we combine social network analysis and qualitative content analysis of the interview transcripts. Results show that both governance networks display the typical structural and procedural characteristics of boundary organizations. We further discuss how single design characteristics can potentially affect ecosystem services provision as a collective benefit of the collaboration. Overall, the concept of boundary organizations provides a useful lens to study collaborative governance arrangements.

Accelerating Climate Change Adaptive Capacity Through Regional Sustained Assessment and Evaluation in Hawai‘i and the U.S. Affiliated Pacific Islands

As the impacts and risks from climate change increase, the climate assessment landscape has expanded in scope and application, resulting in the desire for more information relevant to local decision-making. Some regions lack detailed climate projections and a body of consensus findings about sector-specific impacts, and there is a need for actionable, culturally cognizant, translated climate information suitable for integration into operations and management, budgeting, funding proposals, and domestic and international policy. The Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment, or PIRCA, is the subject of this decade-long case study illustrating the need, development, and benefit of creating and sustaining a nuanced, collaborative, and deliberately inclusive climate assessment effort among researchers and practitioners in Hawai‘i and the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI). Using external evaluations done in 2013 and 2021, and our observations as participants in the process, we describe regional adaptive capacity challenges—an important component of the decision context for PIRCA stakeholders—and analyze the role of the PIRCA network in accelerating climate adaptation. We also examine how regional and national assessments complement each other, and how assessment processes can aid in translation to sub-national decision making across the climate science-policy interface. Results reveal components of the PIRCA that are foundational to its effectiveness: framing climate information in human and decision-centric ways; use of inclusive and non-extractive methods; willingness to shift approaches to meet stakeholder objectives; leveraging the resources of the Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) and other boundary organizations; taking the time to build relationships; and creating a dedicated position to sustain collaborations and relationships within the region and at larger assessment scales. Our experience and the feedback received through the evaluation suggest that these lessons are transferable to other regions and scales, and that sustained and collaborative regional climate assessments can serve a key function in complementing major national and international assessments, by translating and more effectively targeting information to meet local needs in support of regional climate adaptation and policymaking.

Scientist Engagement with Boundary Organizations and Knowledge Coproduction: A Case Study of the Southwest Fire Science Consortium

Knowledge coproduction is increasingly advocated as a way to address complex socioecological issues, such as catastrophic wildfires. In turn, attention has been paid to boundary organizations to foster knowledge coproduction. Despite this growing interest, little research has examined the interplay between knowledge coproduction, boundary organizations, and scientists. We interviewed scientists involved with the Southwest Fire Science Consortium (SWFSC) to examine (1) relationships between their engagement with SWFSC and knowledge coproduction in their own work and (2) SWFSC’s role in fostering participation in knowledge coproduction. Overall, scientists more engaged with SWFSC reported involvement in a wider variety of knowledge coproduction activities. However, some knowledge coproduction activities, especially those requiring greater time investment or facing institutional barriers (e.g., research collaboration) were less common among all participants. Most scientists involved in knowledge coproduction believed that SWFSC increased their participation in these activities outside the boundary organization context, in part because SWFSC provided opportunities to interact with and understand the needs of managers/practitioners, as well as build research collaborations. Findings indicate that boundary organizations, such as SWFSC, can foster knowledge coproduction, but that they may need to further explore ways to address challenges for knowledge coproduction activities that involve greater time commitment or institutional challenges.

The puzzle of sharing scientific data

ABSTRACT Government funding entities have placed data sharing at the centre of scientific policy. While there is widespread consensus that scientific data sharing benefits scientific progress, there are significant barriers to its wider adoption. We seek a deeper understanding of how researchers from different fields share their data and the barriers and facilitators of such sharing. We draw upon the notions of epistemic cultures and collective action theory to consider the enablers and deterrents that scientists encounter when contributing to the collective good of data sharing. Our study employs a mixed-methods design by combining survey data collected in 2016 and 2018 with qualitative data from two case studies sampled within two scientific communities: high-energy physics and molecular biology. We describe how scientific communities with different epistemic cultures can employ modularity, time delay, and boundary organisations to overcome barriers to data sharing.

Autonomy and Coordinating Mechanisms of State-Society Boundary Organizations in Mainland China

State-society boundary organizations face the challenge to maintain autonomy as well as flexibilities to respond to various goals and needs of state and non-state actors. Chinese state used to exert much control over intermediary NGOs (boundary organizations) and some have become bureaucratized. Recent reforms have sought to transform them to be more autonomous from the government and more responsive to NGOs. This paper investigates the managerial autonomy and coordinating mechanisms of 29 intermediary NGOs in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangdong. Regardless whether they are initiated by the state or non-state actors, as boundary organizations, they can effectively play a bridging role when they simultaneously deploy multiple mechanisms to sustain autonomy and at the same time integrate differences of interests between state and non-state actors.

ПУБЛИЧНАЯ ПОЛИТИКА: РАЗВИТИЕ ЗАРУБЕЖНЫХ И РОССИЙСКИХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ

The basic directions of contemporary research in the field of public policy are the subject of analysis. The experience of World and Russian public policy research is analyzed. The concepts of governance, political cycles, policy learning, advocacy coalition, multiple streams, boundary organizations are in the focus of analysis, as well as digital participation. In field of Russian researches network public policy, municipal public policy, concept of mediator institutes as well as influence of digitalization are subject of analysis. The institutional basement for public policy development (university chairs and research committee of Russian Political Science association) are object for analysis also.

Mysteries of gene regulation: Promoters are not the sole triggers of gene expression

Cis-regulatory elements of promoters are essential for gene regulation by transcription factors (TFs). However, the regulatory roles of nonpromoter regions, TFs, and epigenetic marks remain poorly understood in plants. In this study, we characterized the cis-regulatory regions of 53 TFs and 19 histone marks in 328 chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP-seq) datasets from Arabidopsis. The genome-wide maps indicated that both promoters and regions around the transcription termination sites of protein-coding genes recruit the most TFs. The maps also revealed a diverse of histone combinations. The analysis suggested that exons play critical roles in the regulation of non-coding genes. Additionally, comparative analysis between heat-stress-responsive and nonresponsive genes indicated that the genes with distinct functions also exhibited substantial differences in cis-regulatory regions, histone regulation, and topologically associating domain (TAD) boundary organization. By integrating multiple high-throughput sequencing datasets, this study generated regulatory models for protein-coding genes, non-coding genes, and TAD boundaries to explain the complexity of transcriptional regulation.

How can impact strategies be developed that better support universities to address twenty-first-century challenges?

To better address twenty-first-century challenges, research institutions often develop and publish research impact strategies, but as a tool, impact strategies are poorly understood. This study provides the first formal analysis of impact strategies from the UK, Canada, Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and Hong Kong, China, and from independent research institutes. Two types of strategy emerged. First, ‘achieving impact’ strategies tended to be bottom-up and co-productive, with a strong emphasis on partnerships and engagement, but they were more likely to target specific beneficiaries with structured implementation plans, use boundary organisations to co-produce research and impact, and recognise impact with less reliance on extrinsic incentives. Second, ‘enabling impact’ strategies were more top-down and incentive-driven, developed to build impact capacity and culture across an institution, faculty or centre, with a strong focus on partnerships and engagement, and they invested in dedicated impact teams and academic impact roles, supported by extrinsic incentives including promotion criteria. This typology offers a new way to categorise, analyse and understand research impact strategies, alongside insights that may be used by practitioners to guide the design of future strategies, considering the limitations of top-down, incentive-driven approaches versus more bottom-up, co-productive approaches.

Collaboration and Policy Making in Adaptation Planning: The Impact of a Boundary Organization in Hungary

Collaboration and Policy Making in Adaptation Planning: The Impact of a Boundary Organization in Hungary

What can city leaders do for climate change? Insights from the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group network

ABSTRACT This paper sheds light on what city leaders can do about climate change in the context of the complex extra-territorial challenges they face. We created an original database of those actions implemented by members of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and investigated which boundary organizations, objects and experiences (‘boundary cooperative arrangements’) can be triggered to undertake climate change actions by city leaders. Through a secondary qualitative analysis, we identified six main actions. The research advances knowledge on both place leadership and collaborative governance, and the findings represent a tool for better tackling the ‘wicked problem’ of climate change.

Connecting science, policy, and practice in agri-food system transformation: The role of boundary infrastructures in the evolution of Brazilian pig production

Scholars have often applied the concept of boundary work and its conceptual progeny to explain how science, policy, and practice collaborate to introduce change into agrifood systems. However, previous studies focused primarily on specific boundary elements (i.e., boundary spanners, boundary organizations, and boundary objects) or particular innovation processes (in terms of scope or timescale) within broad transformative change. This study aims to deepen the understanding of long-term transformative processes in agri-food systems by looking at how boundary infrastructures influenced the evolution of the Brazilian pig production system from a setting in which it mainly produced pork lard for a domestic market to a setting of being integrated in global supply chains and following international standards. Mainly, we add to the extant literature by highlighting that boundary infrastructures influenced the longterm transformative process experienced by BPPS by establishing a space where science-policy-practice interactions legitimized particular visions and values and instilled responsibility and accountability to spur various joint actions in support of innovation. We also contribute to the extant literature by showing that boundary infrastructures evolution in BPPS was incremental, long-term, multi-site, and with intertwined leverage. Boundary infrastructures provide structuration to system transformation and are also (re)structured while transitions unfold. Since boundary infrastructures have a certain directionality and may become hegemonic and exclusionary, this requires sensitiveness to the need to reorient a hegemonic boundary infrastructure or create a parallel one. Our study deepens the understanding of how coordination unfolds in long-term transformative processes, a topic deemed of interest given current debates on promoting agri-food systems transformation. We argue that better awareness of boundary infrastructures in which science-policy-practice interactions occur can help guide the direction of innovation to support sustainability transitions in agri-food systems.

Family Firms, Family Boundary Organizations, and the Family-Related Organizational Ecosystem

While entrepreneurial families often expand their activity over multiple businesses and patrimonial assets, this complexity is rarely addressed in mainstream family business research, where the predominant focus is on the family business or, at best, on the family controlling the operational business. We advance a more holistic understanding of entrepreneurial families that contemplates the variety of assets they create or acquire over time that jointly generate financial and socioemotional wealth for the family, and call for attention to the variety of organizations that entrepreneurial families establish to preserve, manage, and/or administer such assets. We theorize that each of these organizations can be devised as a family boundary organization (FBO), which operates at the interface of the entrepreneurial family and other systems, and such FBOs form a family-related organizational ecosystem. We propose a new framework that extends the scope of research beyond the family business and focuses more directly on entrepreneurial families and on the boundaries between the entrepreneurial family, its multiple assets, and the FBOs in the family-related organizational ecosystem. This framework paves the ground to extend the three-circle model, broadening the scope of family business research to consider a wider range of organizations besides the family firm, such as family foundations, family business foundations, family offices, family holdings, family academies, and family museums. Drawing on the organizational boundaries literature, we integrate organizational boundaries in the theory of the family firm and propose a research agenda to examine the entrepreneurial family and its assets in a broader way.

U.S. Family Forest Owners' Forest Management for Climate Adaptation: Perspectives From Extension and Outreach Specialists

In the United States (US), family forest owners, a group that includes individuals, families, trusts, and estates, are the largest single landowner category, owning approximately one-third of the nation's forests. These landowners' individualized decision-making on forest management has a profound impact on US forest cover and function at both local and regional scales. We sought to understand perceptions among family forest specialists of: climate impacts and adaptation options across different forested US regions; how family forest owners are taking climate adaptation into consideration in their forest management, if at all; and major barriers to more active management for adaptation among family forest owners. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 48 forest experts across the US who work with family forest owners, including extension specialists, state forestry agency employees, and consulting foresters who focus on family forest engagement. Our interviewees shared details on how both climate change impacts and forest management for climate adaptation vary across the US, and they perceived a lack of active forest management by family forest owners. They explained that western forest landowners confronting the imminent threat of catastrophic wildfires are more likely to see a need for active forest management. By contrast, in the east, where most forestland is privately owned, interviewees said that landowners see relatively fewer climate impacts on their forests and less need for forest management to respond to climate change. Perceived barriers to more active family forest management for climate adaptation include the lack of more robust markets for a wide range of forest products, a higher capacity forestry workforce, education and assistance in planning forest management, and addressing the issue of increased parcelization of family forest lands. We situate these perceptions in conversations on the role of boundary organizations in climate adaptation, how individual adaptation occurs, and how governing methods frame adaptation possibilities.

Time to Transition: Barriers and Opportunities to Farmer Adoption of Soil GHG Mitigation Practices in Dutch Agriculture

As the second largest exporter of agricultural products worldwide, the Netherlands is a production hub, a leading example of high yields per hectare. However, this productivity includes intensive farming practices, placing a risk on the climate through the emission of greenhouse gases N2O and CO2 from soil. To meet global efforts, the Netherlands must reduce its climatic impact, including soil emissions, but the transition to alternative farming practices can be challenging. This research identifies the barriers and opportunities for arable farmers to adopt practices which mitigate emissions from agricultural soils, and consists of a literature review, informant interviews, and semi-structured interviews with farmers, policy-makers, and boundary organizations. Main findings are (1) a lack of awareness by farmers of their soil greenhouse gas production, and (2) six barriers and five opportunities for farmer adoption with placement of these findings into different steps of adoption. Critical barriers include economic challenges, personal mindset, on-farm complications, and the need to reconcile different stakeholders' rates of adoption. Opportunities lie with farmers becoming interested and able to quantify soil health, positive framing in the media, and policies or economic mechanisms to assist farmers. If the Netherlands can transition its farming system, the opportunities for the global food system could be significant.

Is this what success looks like? Mismatches between the aims, claims, and evidence used to demonstrate impact from knowledge exchange processes at the interface of environmental science and policy

As anthropogenic pressures on the environment grow, science-policy interaction is increasingly needed to support evidence-informed decision-making. However, there are many barriers to knowledge exchange (KE) at the science-policy interface, including difficulties evaluating its outcomes. The aims of this study are to synthesize the literature to elucidate the a) intended and b) claimed outcomes of KE processes at the interface of environmental science and policy, as well as the c) evidence used to evaluate them and d) methods used for collecting evaluation data. Results from systematically identifying and analyzing 397 articles show that co-production, knowledge brokerage, boundary organizations, and social connections were the most common strategies for KE. KE processes commonly aimed, claimed and referred to evidence regarding the usability of knowledge (e.g. credibility, salience, legitimacy) and social outcomes (e.g. networking, awareness, learning, trust-building). They also aimed for deeper policy/economic/societal impacts and actual use of scientific knowledge within decision-making. These additional goals, however, were seldom claimed to have been achieved, although products (e.g. maps/tools) and process attributes (e.g. equity, power-relations, transparency) were commonly used for evidencing impact. Hence, this study found that success from KE at the interface of environmental science and policy comes in diverse forms and showed a divergence between what studies aim for (ambitious) and what they evidence or claim as an achievement (more modest). This may represent failures of KE processes to reach intended goals, shortcomings in evaluation literature/approaches, or mismatches between timescales of evaluation and impact. Overall, this suggests a need to better align goals with evaluation measures to plan, facilitate, and appreciate the diverse impacts of KE processes.

Addressing Water Resources and Environmental Quality Programming Needs in Arequipa, Peru

AbstractWater resources in historically water scarce regions such as Arequipa, Peru are vulnerable to changing conditions. Population growth and climate change are projected to be major threats to water availability in the region, while urban growth, informal mining, and agriculture threaten water quality. To address these concerns and others, the Arequipa Nexus Institute for Food, Energy, Water, and the Environment (the Arequipa Nexus Institute) was formed as a collaboration between Purdue University and the Universidad Nacional de San Agustín to address key challenges to a sustainable future for Arequipa through research. In this work, a vision for water‐related extension programming in Arequipa was developed through three phases of data collection. Phases 1 and 2 involved semi‐structured interviews and focus groups with agency personnel, community leaders, and farmers in Arequipa. The water education needs of stakeholders that could be addressed by water and environmental extension programming were identified. In Phase 3, a workshop of researchers from the Arequipa Nexus Institute used the data and their knowledge of institutional capacity to identify opportunities for the Institute to serve as a boundary organization facilitating communication and collaboration between scientists and stakeholders to support water extension and engagement in Arequipa. Water resources extension services provided by this boundary organization would include education about water quality, water allocation, and water use, as well as providing resources to improve public participation in water management. Water extension services could be part of a cross‐cutting extension initiative within the Arequipa Nexus Institute, which would be responsible for accumulating research data and connecting them to both formal and informal stakeholders. The dual training nature of the boundary organization will serve to both increase public understanding of water concerns and the capacity of information generators in the university and agencies to engage with the public. This study is unique in combining both sides of the boundary (community needs and scientists’ perspectives) in developing the vision for this extension programming.

Tackling energy poverty through social intrapreneurship in large-scale energy companies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present advances towards a social intrapreneurship department within energy corporations. By drawing on the literature on social intrapreneurship and stakeholder theory, this paper provides a conceptual proposal for an organisational structure. This paper builds on the notion of bridging and boundary organisations, to suggest an organisational innovative structure as a social intrapreneurship endeavour focussing on the increasing salience of weak stakeholders in energy corporations from the energy justice approach.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on the literatures on social intrapreneurship and stakeholder theory, to provide arguments and an organisational proposal to alleviate energy poverty in energy corporations.FindingsThe results are presented in a conceptual process model for the development of Social Energy Department units within large energy companies, illustrating their embeddedness in both societal and company-level processes to facilitate social intrapreneurship initiatives that would alleviate energy poverty in the just transition.Practical implicationsThe paper promises novel insights at the nexus of social enterprise and organisational change. The practical applicability is particularly promising, as it focusses on integrating novel units in energy companies and stimulates further research on models of social intrapreneurship to tackle energy poverty.Originality/valueThe paper offers both practical and theoretical contributions to the stakeholder theory field with insights from social intrapreneurship and organisational stakeholder theory in the context of a specific social problem – energy poverty, energy justice and the just energy transition.

Decision-Making for Rewilding: An Adaptive Governance Framework for Social-Ecological Complexity

Rewilding can be defined as the reorganisation or regeneration of wildness in an ecologically degraded landscape with minimal ongoing intervention. While proposals for rewilding are increasingly common, they are frequently controversial and divisive amongst stakeholders. If implemented, rewilding initiatives may alter the social-ecological systems within which they are situated and thus generate sudden and unforeseen outcomes. So far, however, much of the discourse on the planning and implementation of rewilding has focused on identifying and mitigating ecological risks. There has been little consideration of how rewilding could alter the human components of the social-ecological systems concerned, nor governance arrangements that can manage these dynamics. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a generic adaptive governance framework tailored to the characteristics of rewilding, based on principles of managing complex social-ecological systems. We integrate two complementary natural resource governance approaches that lend themselves to the contentious and unpredictable characteristics of rewilding. First, adaptive co-management builds stakeholder adaptive capacity through iterative knowledge generation, collaboration and power-sharing, and cross-scale learning networks. Second, social licence to operate establishes trust and transparency between project proponents and communities through new public-private partnerships. The proposed framework includes structural and process elements which incorporate a boundary organisation, a decision-into-practise social learning exercise for planning and design, and participatory evaluation. The latter assesses rewilding outcomes and pre-conditions for the continuation of adaptive governance and conservation conflict resolution.

Matching institutionalized expertise with global needs: Boundary organizations and hybrid management at the science-policy interfaces of soil and land governance

In environmental governance, the role of expertise is regarded as a crucial support to decision-making. Yet, in intergovernmental settings, studies aimed at understanding the relation between science and policy have predominantly focused on the fields of climate change and biodiversity. Through a fieldwork-based study of the Science-Policy Interface (SPI) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (ITPS) of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), this paper investigates the role of scientific expertise in the global governance of soil and land degradation. Drawing upon the concepts of boundary organization and hybrid management, the study shows that analytical tools deriving from the Science and Technology Studies (STS) tradition provide valuable understandings of science-policy dynamics at the intergovernmental level. The results of the analysis reveal that science-policy organizations match the definition of boundary organization to different degrees and that hybrid management strategies occur with different magnitudes, with significant implications for each organization's capacity to bridge science and policy. This implies that such STS concepts should not be regarded as purely descriptive labels, but as resources that can serve broad analytical purposes in the study of global environmental governance. In this respect, the study contributes to an on-going theoretical dialogue between STS and International Relations (IR), claiming that IR scholars should consider the adoption of relevant STS theoretical tools for the analysis of global environmental institutions.