Attempting to Cultivate Mindsets for Boundary Spanning in Remote Indigenous Policy

Abstract

Collaboration is held to be an essential element of addressing complex problems. However, it is difficult to achieve, as it is often in tension with bureaucratic mindsets and traditions. Recently, Williams (2013) has suggested that all policy bureaucrats and program managers required to be involved with collaboration need to ‘span boundaries’ – to develop the capacity to build effective relationships, be able to engage ‘deeply’ with different parties, and understand and value multiple perspectives. A recent government initiative to improve Indigenous wellbeing in remote Australia had a strong emphasis on collaboration and partnership. However, policy actors involved in implementation resisted attempts to make them work differently, resulting in reversion to the status quo. Consistent with social practice literature, I contend that openness to changed ways of working is a critical element for success. Drawing on interviews with elite policy actors involved in the development and implementation of the initiative, the analysis finds that career public servants appear to be less open to collaboration than those who have worked outside. While I agree that boundary spanning capability is important for overcoming the pull of the status quo, the analysis suggests that diversifying the public sector workforce should supplement training efforts.

Navigating tensions in co‐production: A missing link in leadership for public value

“…Given these very different understandings of the term, it is reasonable to expect that, without specific guidance, diverse public managers would seek to create public value through co‐production in very different ways. But it is also likely that the public managers putting forward ideas consistent with community development approaches might be expected to be more open to implementing co‐production than those suggesting the more managerialist notions of ‘wide engagement’ (Brown ). A common factor among those who adhered to the managerialist viewpoint was that their careers had been confined to the public sector.…”

Boundary Spanning in Local Governance: A Scoping Review

“…Outside more clearly defined organizations, 11 studies identified “community” as an entity into which or from which boundaries were spanned.. “Community” often seemed to refer to a local population; for example, “boundary spanners who broker connections between the school district and the community” (Brown, 2017, p. 369) or “reaching beyond clinic walls to create community linkages” (Etz et al, 2008, p. 391). At other times, studies more explicitly referred to communities defined by ethnic or cultural connections (Carlsson & Pijpers, 2020).…”

“…It is apparent from the number of studies identified both that boundary-spanning is drawn upon as a concept to understand and frame what is happening in local settings and that it is applied to collaborations involving a host of different organizations and sectors. Notably, despite one paper’s reference to the “lack of definitional clarity” around boundary spanning (Brown, 2017), a relatively solid core definition surfaced in the research examined, centered on boundary spanning as facilitating some collaboration between systems that often have different languages and priorities. The divergences center mostly on the scope of what this involves.…”

Commonwealth place‐based policies for addressing geographically concentrated disadvantage: A typology and critical analysis

“…A multilateral approach has been supported by successive Ministers for Indigenous Affairs and Prime Ministers (Brown, 2017; Marsh et al., 2017). A decisive shift in this direction occurred through the 2007 National Partnership Agreement on Remote Service Delivery associated with the Close the Gap targets.…”