Clearly, public organizations no longer have the luxury, capacity, or discretion to operate independently within a highly interconnected governance framework, and boundary spanning has become a core activity of contemporary public management. The literature on this particular cadre of public actors is comparatively silent, so the work by van Meerkerk and Edelenbos in Boundary Spanners in Public Management and Governance is especially welcome. This can be achieved partly through structural interventions and policies designed to facilitate and ease cross-boundary management, but, more critically, occur through the management practices and actions of public actors-the boundary spanners with their boundary-spanning behaviors. Consequently, contemporary public management and governance necessitate the effective management of these boundaries in the course of the pursuit of public policy objectives. They are dynamic and shifting they can form barriers of variable permeability or conversely help to facilitate interactions and, they interweave together to form complex policy spaces. Some of these boundaries are real and others socially constructed.

This world is shaped and defined by a scaffolding of a myriad number of boundaries, including organizational, professional, social, cultural, and psychological. The most significant of these include a torrent of complex and cross-boundary “wicked” issues and problems that single organizations and actors cannot resolve by managing autonomously ever-increasing demands from service users and the wider public for meaningful involvement in shaping and evaluating public services constant pressure to design and deliver efficient and effective services against a background of limited resources and, a realization that the needs of future generations must be embraced to achieve a sustainable future. Over recent years, the world of public management and governance has evolved in response to the changing nature and challenges presented by modern societies.

Edward elgar torrent