Weaving Governance through Boundary Spanning Activities: Toward Collaborative Solutions to Sustainability Challenges in Asia

Abstract

This research proposes a novel perspective known as “boundary spanning practice” for sustainability studies based on field research and practice. This viewpoint aims to encompass various boundaries between administrative sectors, academic disciplines, government and nongovernmental actors, and researchers and other stakeholders in the pursuit of collaborative solutions and governance-building for sustainability challenges. This research argues that governance in the context of collaborative solutions to sustainability challenges can be defined as the “reflective process to realize a creative and emergent way of governance in bringing various types of knowledge into try-and-error practices, while stakeholders who participate in task solution shares a common vision of their collaboration.” Moreover, it also asserts that a researcher who conducts action research can play a significant role in developing such a method of governance as a stakeholder. By discussing existing literature and workshop deliberations in this project, this research identified several issues focusing on boundary spanning practices to be discussed for further research, such as the ambiguity of boundaries, multifaceted nature of boundaries and their dynamism, diversity of actors and their roles as boundary spanners, and reflective process of boundary spanning practices.