Creating Broader Research Impacts through Boundary Organizations

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12985
• Author: Jennifer Le,Athena Grossman,Aimee L. Franklin,Mark Shafer
• Date: 01 March 2019
• Published date: 01 March 2019

Creating Broader Research Impacts through Boundary Organizations 215

Abstract: Climate science research documents and predicts changes in the physical environment. This information

informs policy decisions and public programs through the design of human interventions that promote adaptive

management. Since the early 2000s, federal funding has led to the creation of transdisciplinary regional climate

workgroups to facilitate integrative knowledge coproduction and promote shared use of research results by scientific

and nonscientific stakeholders. Labeled “boundary organizations,” these workgroups are tasked with facilitating

partnerships between climate science researchers and practitioners with expertise in multiple physical and social science

disciplines. When these organizations are successful, scientific findings and practitioner experiences are integrated

to synergistically create usable knowledge about adaptive management that provides direct public value and creates

broader societal impacts. This article explores the broader impacts provided by these boundary organizations through

the establishment of regional research agendas and the communication of research results in ways that influence

regional public policy and promote adaptive management.

Evidence for Practice

• Boundary organizations integrate scientific findings and practitioner experiences to synergistically create

usable knowledge about adaptive management.

• Providing a variety of user-focused research communications enhances issue literacy and salience and informs

policy decisions and societal actions.

• Boundary organizations amplify public value creation and promote broader impacts.

In 1995, new federal grant funding by

the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. Department

of Commerce incentivized the creation of

regional workgroups tasked with conducting

multidisciplinary climate science assessments and

translating research results in ways that inform policy

decisions and foster social/behavioral programmatic

actions that enhance community resilience. These

workgroups reimagine the conduct and transfer of

physical science research that is particularly relevant

to the geographic area directly to local stakeholders

who can utilize the findings. Instead of determining

research agendas and then conducting or directing

the research, the regional workgroups facilitate

connections between multiple stakeholders across

overlapping sectoral and organizational boundaries

for coproductive processes and outcomes. When

successful, research results are broadly communicated

to policy makers, scholars, professionals, local

industry members, and the public in a variety of

ways to promote adaptive management through

mutually interactive processes that inform decisions

(Polanyi 1962).

Boundary organizations have as their main task

the facilitation of voluntary, fluid, and informal

partnerships with scientific and nonscientific

stakeholders representing a wide variety of physical

and social science disciplines. The purpose of these

partnerships is to address complex physical and social

science phenomena that overlap multiple disciplines

and cross organizational sectors. Our research

purpose is to identify the broader impacts of climate

assessment workgroups as boundary organizations.

Do they facilitate coproduction of usable knowledge

that encourages societal action? Connecting physical

science research with the design of social interventions

can broaden the impacts of the regional workgroups

and has the potential to enhance public value.

Boundary Organizations in the Climate

Sciences

The creation of public value is not the sole domain of

government programs—increasingly it is accomplished

through collaborative interactions designed to leverage

the subject matter experience of practitioners and

the research expertise of scholars. This can be done

through the work of boundary organizations, whose

Aimee L. Franklin

Athena Grossman

Jennifer Le

Mark Shafer

University of Oklahoma

Creating Broader Research Impacts through Boundary

Organizations

Jennifer Le received her bachelor’s and

master of public administration degrees

from the University of Oklahoma. She

participated as a research assistant in

the Drought Portal Information Project of

the Southern Climate Impacts Planning

Program.

E-mail: jennifer.a.le-1@ou.edu

Athena Grossman received her master

of public administration degree from the

University of Oklahoma. She participated as

a research assistant in the Drought Portal

Information Project of the Southern Climate

Impacts Planning Program.

E-mail: athena.s.grossman-1@ou.edu

Aimee L. Franklin is Presidential

Professor in the Department of Political

Science at the University of Oklahoma. Her

research interests are research translation,

public budgeting, and citizen engagement.

E-mail: alfranklin@ou.edu

Research Article

Mark Shafer is principal investigator

for the Southern Climate Impacts Planning

Program (SCIPP), member of the Oklahoma

Climatological Survey, and assistant

professor in geography and environmental

sustainability at the University of Oklahoma.

His main research interests are drought and

human adaptation.

E-mail: mshafer@mesonet.org

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 2, pp. 215–224. © 2018 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12985.