Brokers’ facilitation of cross-organizational learning and working on wicked problems

Abstract

Purpose – Wicked problems like poverty, the energy transition, climate change and organized crime require interorganizational collaboration to develop novel approaches. Such collaboration across organizational boundaries does not emerge effortlessly, resulting in brokers (consultants, program managers, project leaders, coaches, etc.) being invited to facilitate. The purpose of this paper is to understand how brokers address the wickedness of societal issues via boundary work and boundary crossing. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative, explorative design was applied in which 12 brokers were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed using a thematic within- and across-case analysis. Findings – The findings show how brokers address wickedness through working on six interrelated challenges. The challenges show how boundary crossing theory and boundary work theory complement each other and how this might help to develop a more fine-grained understanding of the ways brokers enable collaboration and learning across boundaries. Originality/value – This study uniquely combines theory and findings from boundary crossing and boundary work, two complementary, yet thus far somewhat isolated bodies of literature, to unravel how brokers can negotiate power dynamics and promote learning processes in interorganizational collaboration on wicked problems.