Public Management Review

Coping with tensions, challenges and limitations of boundary spanning work in collaborative governance and public service delivery in turbulent times

Public governance practice today is increasingly confronted with complex, turbulent, and societal challenges that cross organizational, scalar, sectoral, and community boundaries. Wicked problems such as sustainability transitions, social inequality, rapid digitalization and democratic backsliding demand collaboration between public, private, and societal actors (O’Flynn et al., 2014; Torfing et al., 2012; Klijn et al., 2025). In addition, community-based initiatives and growing demands for co-production have further stimulated cross-boundary working in public service delivery and governance (Edelenbos and Van Meerkerk, 2016; Kekez et al., 2019).

Recent strands of governance theory have pointed at the turbulence of nowadays societal challenges and their implications for the dynamic, transformative and unstable nature of collaborative forms of governance (Ansell et al., 2023). This increasing turbulence has important implications for boundary spanning agents at the frontlines trying to make various forms of cross-boundary collaboration and service delivery work. Recent studies show that such boundary spanning workers face various institutional challenges and tensions in trying to move public engagement and cross-boundary collaboration forward (Blijleven and Van Hulst, 2021; Bynner et al., 2023; Nederhand et al., 2019).

This special issue aims to advance the research agenda on collaborative governance and public service delivery by going deeper into how boundary spanners deal with various tensions, managing different interfaces while they try to make cross-boundary collaboration and service delivery work, and what this means in relation to their environment. These tensions are compounded by broader features of contemporary governance. Fragmentation in the form of sectoral silos, organizational and political discontinuities, fragile trust relations, uneven capacities and diverging institutional logics are pervasive conditions of collaborative settings (Seo et al., 2023; Stephens et al., 2024).

Research in the field of network governance has produced rich insights into the forms, conditions, and barriers of collaborative governance, as well as the managerial strategies required to organize such collaboration (Provan & Kenis, 2008; Ansell & Gash, 2008; Torfing et al., 2012; Klijn et al., 2025). Moreover, studies on boundary work and boundary spanning at the front-lines of collaborative governance and public service-delivery have focused on the competencies and practices that enable collaboration across boundaries (Bartels, 2018; Agger & Tortzen, 2023; La Grouw et al., 2024; Van Meerkerk and Edelenbos, 2018a). In this regard, several studies have unpacked the different roles of individual boundary spanners, various boundary spanning activities and competences relevant for moving public engagement and collaborative processes forward (Guarneros-Meza & Martin 2016; Van Meerkerk and Edelenbos, 2018a; Williams, 2012).

However, we know too little about how boundary spanning agents at the frontlines cope with various tensions, try to sustain collaborative momentum, and try to implement collaboration between state and non-state actors in turbulent and fragile governance environments. Moreover, the implications for boundary spanners themselves, including how they continue their work under conditions of cumulative pressure and role strain, remain insufficiently understood. Several avenues offer promises to advance the research agenda and to bring collaborative and network governance theory more in conversation with street-level scholarship.

Avenues for advancing the research agenda on boundary spanning in collaborative governance and public service delivery

First, research on boundary spanning in collaborative governance and service delivery can be enriched by engaging more closely with insights from street level scholarship (Maynard Moody and Musheno 2003; Gofen et al. 2024). Street level studies show that collaboration is enacted through everyday and relational practices that unfold both in public view and behind the scenes. These practices include improvised coordination, informal calibration of routines, continuous maintenance of interpersonal connections, translation of roles and expectations and shared interpretation of user needs (Van Hulst et al. 2011, Bartels 2018; La Grouw et al., 2024). Such work stabilizes collaboration through trust building, pragmatic problem solving and accumulated interpersonal knowledge, often compensating for incomplete formal structures (Romzek et al., 2014; Vandenbussche et al, 2025). These insights enrich boundary spanning research by shifting attention from role descriptions to the situated practices through which coordination is actually produced and sustained in turbulent settings.

In line with this, integrating insights from recent collaborative governance studies using bricolage theory can further deepen understanding of how boundary spanners cope with turbulence, trying to sustain collaborative momentum, and trying to craft robustness in fragile governance environments (Carstensen & Sørensen, 2025). Bricolage theory draws attention to how bricoleurs use whatever resources, relationships, and institutional patches are at hand to craft workable solutions and maintain robustness within collaborative governance (Carstensen & Sørensen, 2025). Learning from bricolage theory, contributions in this special issue can shed light on underexplored aspects of boundary spanning practices, such as improvisation (Forester et al., 2023), patchwork problem-solving, creative recombination of institutional rules, and adaptive reframing.

Second, the capacity to span boundaries is fundamentally shaped by organizational and institutional conditions. Boundary spanning takes place in contexts marked by fragmented mandates, uneven resources, narrow accountability regimes and weak coordination infrastructures, all of which influence which relational and interpretive practices are possible or legitimate (Van Meerkerk and Edelenbos 2018a; Klindt et al. 2024). These conditions increasingly also include digital infrastructures and data practices that mediate information exchange and decision-making, offering for instance new opportunities for participatory practices, but also new constraints related to access, transparency and professional discretion (Meijer and Grimmelikhuijsen, 2020). Together, these structural features generate the need for boundary spanning yet simultaneously might constrain or overload those who perform it. Street level research highlights that practitioners often compensate for systemic deficits through relational labor and improvisation, although these efforts are highly vulnerable to staff turnover, political shifts and the absence of managerial backing (Romzek et al. 2014; Gofen et al. 2024). Advancing research on boundary work therefore requires careful attention to the dynamic interplay between everyday collaborative practices and organizational, institutional and technological scaffolding, and to how these configurations shape both boundary spanning itself and its implications for public value creation and collaborative governance (Klindt et al. 2024).

Third, drawing on role theory and coping with different role stressors, the next step is to better understand how boundary spanning front-line workers experience role tensions and how they develop certain coping strategies (Tummers et al., 2015) and practices to deal with these tensions. In bringing joint value creation and collaborations between state and non-state actors into practice, boundary spanning persons are confronted by different role expectations and role ambiguity that arise from diverging logics, conflicting demands and loyalties from within and outside their organizational context (Agger & Tortzen, 2023; McMullin, 2025; Nederhand et al., 2019; Van der Meer et al., 2024). Understanding how they cope with these role challenges is crucial for both advancing theory and improving collaborative practices in public governance.

Fourth, there is a growing need to consider the possible dark sides of boundary spanning. Reliance on individual boundary spanners can mask structural deficiencies, reproduce inequalities in emotional and relational labor and generate expectations that are unsustainable in the long run. Boundary spanning might be used to mask structural shortcomings within public organizations assigning them with to heavy unrealistic tasks (Romzek et al., 2014). In addition, overburdening boundary spanners can lead to burnout, withdrawal and a narrowing of collaborative space, particularly in volatile governance environments. Carefully build up relationships by the boundary spanner might turn into dust once the boundary spanner leaves the public scene and makes the work by them very precarious (Van Meerkerk and Edelenbos, 2018a). These tensions deserve more systematic attention to avoid overly idealized depictions of boundary spanning work.

Lastly, an important and often underexplored challenge emerges at the political interface of collaborative governance and public service delivery. Boundary spanning does not occur solely among administrative and societal actors in deliberative settings, but unfolds under conditions shaped by political authority, electoral incentives, media attention, and shifting mandates (Ansell et al., 2025; Klijn et al., 2025). Research shows that political signaling, institutional histories, and bureaucratic politics strongly influence whether collaborative initiatives are interpreted as legitimate, peripheral, or even risky by frontline actors, with direct consequences for participation and coordination (Harish, 2020). Although previous research on the democratic legitimacy of governance networks and the sometimes complicated relationship with representative democracy has generated valuable insights (Sorensen and Torfing, 2005; Klijn et al., 2025), we need a better understanding of how boundary spanners enact political astuteness in their practices (Hartley et al., 2015; Yates and Hartley, 2021), navigate the interface with political representatives and cope with the political dimension in its broader sense (Ansell et al., 2025).

Focus of the Special Issue

This SI focuses on how boundary spanners deal with various tensions in turbulent times, managing different interfaces while they try to make cross-boundary collaboration and service delivery work. Boundary spanning persons – whether labelled boundary spanners, facilitators, intermediaries, bridgers, ‘best persons’, or exemplary practitioners (Van Hulst et al., 2011; Escobar, 2019; Durose et al., 2022; Van Meerkerk and Edelenbos, 2025) – operate in multiple organizational positions and institutional contexts, often as frontline workers, street-level managers, district managers, community leaders or community builders. What unites these roles is that these professionals are able to coordinate their efforts horizontally and vertically (Edelenbos and Teisman, 2011), thereby mobilizing different forms of bonding, bridging and linking social capital, while navigating dilemmas that arise from diverging logics, practices, and role expectations.

We invite contributions that are empirical or theoretical, methodologically rigorous, and engage with one or multiple of the following themes:

1. Dilemmas, paradoxes and dark sides of boundary spanning

• What dilemmas and paradoxes do boundary spanners face in managing the front- and backstage of collaborative practices under pressure? How are they supported or constrained by their environment?
• What risks, unintended and unwanted consequences emerge in boundary work and how to mitigate or prevent these ‘dark sides’ of boundary spanning?

2. Role tensions and coping practices

• How do boundary spanners (emotionally) experience and cope with various role tensions? How and when do they sustain, persist or give up in doing their boundary work?

3. Dealing with the political interface, multiple accountabilities and logics

• How do boundary spanners deal with political conflicts and challenging circumstances? How do they manage clashing accountabilities and institutional logics across organizational, scalar, sectoral, and community contexts?

4. Boundary spanning practices of different agents in the state, market and civil society and their implications for joint public value creation and transformational governance

• How do boundary spanning practices of different boundary spanners in the state, market and civil society shape collaborative outcomes in joint value creation and transformational governance? What are differences and similarities in the capacities and contributions of these boundary spanning agents and when are these practices aligned?

(references available on request from the Guest Editors)