1.1 The Central Challenge
Collaboration across boundaries, such as interdisciplinarity via the formation of scientific teams, is by now widely recognized as an indispensable response to complex problems (Perz 2016). “Wicked problems” that defy established solutions within institutional and cultural silos are typically marshaled as examples of situations where crossing boundaries for collaboration is necessary (Balint et al. 2011; Brown et al. 2008). Illustrative cases of wicked problems include health care provision, environmental degradation, and immigration policy. Funders of innovative science increasingly seek projects with teams that span disciplinary and other divides (e.g., Gewin 2014). Similarly, various areas of practice, such as in environmental conservation, increasingly underscore governance approaches to management (e.g., Batterbury and Fernando 2006; Biermann and Pattberg 2008; Lemos and Agrawal 2006; Newig and Fritsch 2009; Young 1997), as via multi-stakeholder processes, comanagement, and other collaborative modes that feature joint action by governments and other stakeholders (e.g., Armitage et al. 2009; Brick et al. 2001; Buck et al. 2001; Carlsson and Berkes 2005; Colfer 2010; Galat and Berkly 2014; Hemmati 2002; Lauber et al. 2011; Manring 2007; Poncelet 2004; Warner 2007).
The institutions that define disciplines, organizations, countries, and other bounded domains for thought and action exist for many reasons. This carries the crucial implication that crossing boundaries among domains for collaboration is not an automatic or natural process. Bounded domains like disciplines have cultures, and those cultures rest upon assumptions and practices that support theories and methods that may or may not be commensurate across domains. Those assumptions and practices are thus not always obvious or intuitive, which bears the additional repercussion that they must be learned. Collaboration and crossing boundaries thus require the acquisition of knowledge and skills for effective practice.
It is therefore problematic that the knowledge and especially the skills for collaboration and crossing boundaries tend to be overlooked or assumed by specialists of a given domain, even among those who recognize that they need to span divides. There remains a strong tendency to focus on the wicked problem at hand, which is certainly honorable precisely because it is complicated and important. But that also often corresponds to paying insufficient attention to the practices that enable the expertise in collaboration and crossing boundaries to be effectively deployed to address said problem. Similarly, there remains an inclination to dismiss the interpersonal and managerial aspects of collaboration, and of crossing boundaries. While scientists are professional thinkers, and some are naturally sensitive and gregarious, it is incautious to assume that one’s team has the requisite knowledge and skills for applying best practices for collaboration across boundaries. One does not merely collaborate; one manages to do so. Similarly, crossing boundaries is not a routine act, but rather a gesture out of the ordinary, which is subject to questioning due to suspicion. Crossing boundaries for collaboration thus implies a steep learning curve, and a lack of preparation poses significant risks to being able to advance effectively.
It is therefore heartening to note that there are sciences relevant to the effective practice of crossing boundaries for collaboration. However, these sciences differ from those typically invoked to address wicked problems. In the case of environmental problems, it is biophysical and socioeconomic sciences that are usually brought together. But those differ from the sciences required to support collaboration across boundaries per se. Those instead fall in the applied behavioral sciences, notably in psychology and management. While these sciences are not new, they have all too rarely found purchase among specialists in other sciences who would benefit from applying their insights. Hence there is something of a boundary between the sciences often brought to bear on the technical issues involved in wicked problems, and the applied sciences that support best practices in collaborating across boundaries to actually address said problems. The practice of the second is necessary to advance the first.
There are several bodies of thought and scientific literatures on collaboration. In terms of theory, perhaps the classic point of departure concerns the political science literature on the conditions under which collective action is possible. Olson’s (1965) statement argued that self-interest undermines collective action in all but the smallest groups. Ostrom’s (1990) reply however provided examples that identified the conditions under which collective action can occur among many social actors in a sustained fashion. More broadly, the business administration literature has a body of theory concerning management practices in bureaucratic organizations with hierarchical structures (e.g., Daft 2005; Gittel and Weiss 2004; Gittel et al. 2010; Gomez-Mejia et al. 2008; Heckscher and Adler 2006). Varied forms of hierarchical structures, chains of command, and their implications for the flow of authority and information are eminently germane to the conduct of business and other joint activity. In psychology, there are multiple literatures relevant to the enterprise of collaboration. The organizational behavior literature offers numerous insights concerning the relationship between organizational structure and behavior on various levels of scale, ranging among individuals in organizational cultures, team dynamics and productivity, and inter-organizational relationships (e.g., Hersey et al. 2007; Ott et al. 2003). As a complement, industrial psychology has highlighted various applied aspects of behavior in formal organizations, whether in terms of hiring procedures, training and workforce development, performance evaluation, and topics related to organizational performance and consumer behavior (e.g., Cascio 1995; Landy and Conte 2016). Out of research on business management and psychology has emerged work on the “science of teams” (e.g., Fiori 2008; Jones et al. 2008; Wildman and Bedwell 2013) which has focused on issues of the formation and social processes on teams.
Research in these applied behavioral sciences has identified suites of tasks necessary to pursue collaboration, along with challenges that arise in the pursuit of those tasks, and practices to facilitate collaboration. The key summary message that stems from these literatures is twofold. First, collaboration does require effort at learning in order to practice the skills needed to make possible the effective pursuit of shared goals, so collaboration should only be done when necessary. But second, collaboration via the application of those skills makes possible the achievement of shared goals that would otherwise be beyond the reach of the collaborators if they acted independently. As work from the management literature on collaboration has noted, there is “collaborative advantage” in terms of the achievements that become possible via collaboration, if one can learn the skills and apply best practices to avoid “collaborative inertia” (Huxham and Vangen 2005; Lank 2006).
Similarly, there are scholarly literatures on crossing boundaries. Crossing boundaries can complicate collaboration, and thus requires separate recognition. While the general set of skills and practices for crossing boundaries in many ways builds on those involved in collaboration itself, spanning divides often entrains very context-specific challenges and requires some emendations of those skills and practices. Literatures on crossing boundaries thus tend to focus on spanning specific kinds of divides and focus on particular insights from direct experiences. These literatures include work on the practice of interdisciplinarity, inter-organizational collaboration, and international cooperation, all of which I discuss below.
We should respond to calls to cross boundaries for collaboration to address wicked problems. But we also need to acknowledge what others have already learned about the skills required and the practices vital to be effective in spanning divides. In this book, we take up the case of social-environmental problems as a case of wicked problems in order to examine SES science, both in terms of knowledge production for understanding complex systems and for the application of that knowledge to better govern them. In the remainder of this chapter, I briefly review SES science and how it motivates the need for collaboration across boundaries. Then I offer a framework of the issues, tasks, challenges, and practices for effective collaboration, along with a discussion of the complications and strategies of crossing boundaries for collaboration, featuring interdisciplinarity, inter-organizational collaboration, and international cooperation, which are germane to the pursuit of SES science.
