Oosterveld, Maurice (2021) Breaking Barriers To Communication: Using boundary spanning activities to facilitate integration in IRBM projects. Master thesis.
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Abstract
Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM) attempts to integrate spatial and temporal scales, along with stakeholder objectives in river management projects. While this does more justice to the complexity and interconnectedness of projects, it also creates new institutional and communicative barriers. Boundary spanning is a useful tool in overcoming these barriers. However, there are knowledge gaps concerning the effectiveness, interrelatedness, and sequencing of boundary spanning activities – this is partly due to low awareness of context significance, and the frequent conceptualisation of boundary spanning as a holistic concept with interchangeable components. This thesis researched how boundary spanning activities facilitated the integration of objectives during the planning phase of IRBM projects, using a granular approach and qualitative methods. The contextual relations are perceived as boundary types to which boundary spanning activities were applied, namely syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic boundaries. Further, the activities needed to be distinguished too, which are information transferring, translating, coordinating, co-creating, lubricating, representing, and guarding. These boundary spanning characteristics and their contributions to integration were analysed in two cases within the Belgian Sigmaplan. Droogdokkenpark is the combination of flood defence and an urban greening project, while Beneden-Nete is a comprehensive redevelopment of multiple flood areas and wetlands. In both cases, a method triangulation of interviews and documentary analysis was applied to discover the abovementioned variables. Information transferring, translating, coordinating, lubricating, and representing have directly affected integration, the variance of which can be explained by contextual factors. Integration is also facilitated by boundary spanning activities shifting discourses, preventing devolvement of boundaries, and facilitating each other. For future research into the effectiveness of boundary spanning activities, granular methods and an awareness of conditional factors such as boundary types should be adopted.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Degree programme: | Environmental & Infrastructure Planning |
| Supervisor: | Kempenaar, J. and Brink, M.A. van den |
| Date Deposited: | 13 Jul 2021 05:50 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Jul 2021 05:50 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3513 |
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