Chapter Two describes the steady proliferation of collaborative working in both UK public policy and further afield. Multiagency models now characterise approaches to the design and delivery of public services in most policy areas, with national government playing a key role in its promotion and development. Boundary spanning activities and processes have paralleled this trend, with boundary spanners now occupying important roles. This chapter explores the nature of the boundary spanners referred to in the previous chapter as ‘dedicated’ – their role being exclusively grounded within the management, coordination and governance of multiagency and cross-sector arenas. It conducts an in depth examination into the roles boundary spanners play in collaboration, and the competencies they use to discharge these roles effectively.

The boundary spanning role in public sector, multiorganisational environments consists of a number of discrete but interrelated elements (Williams, 2002, 2005). The main ones are reticulist, interpreter/communicator, coordinator and entrepreneur (see Figure 4.1), each having a number of key competencies associated with them. The notion of competency is contested and will be discussed in Chapter 8, but for the present purposes it is understood in the following manner. In order to undertake job roles, individual actors need to possess competencies to equip them to discharge their roles to best effect. The competencies are what the person brings to the job. They may be skills (technical and human), knowledge of particular areas of expertise or accumulated experience of having undertaken this role. Actors also bring personal attributes to bear on their job role. Although these are not considered to be competencies, it is likely that they will influence the manner in which the competencies are discharged. These are considered in the next chapter. Critically, a high degree of connectivity and interplay exists between the various elements and competencies indicating that, in practice, they are used selectively depending on the circumstances presented in terms of context, policy area, form of collaboration, stage in the policy process, issue or problem.

Each of these individual roles is now the subject of detailed exploration and analysis. The discussion is a mixture of material extracted from a review of the literature, interspersed by examples drawn substantially from the author's own research which sought to highlight boundary spanning practice in action.