Recommended Book: Working Across Boundaries

<p></p> <p>Rick Morse is a School of Government faculty member. His work focuses on collaborative governance and public leadership.</p> <p>Community economic development is a classic example of a “transboundary” issue. There is no single authority that, acting alone, can effectively address community and economic development issues. These issues transcend the boundaries we’ve created—jurisdictional, functional, and sectoral boundaries. Community leaders looking to make a difference in terms of community and economic development, therefore, must learn to work across boundaries. With that in mind, I would like to recommend an excellent book that is somewhat of a primer and even a user’s guide to leading regional, transboundary efforts.</p> <p>McKinney and Johnson’s Working Across Boundaries is aimed at practitioners, presenting “an array of practical and tested strategies and techniques” for regional collaboration. The book begins by identifying “a gap in governance” created by the mismatch between jurisdictional and institutional boundaries and the “territory” of the economic, social, and environmental issues we face (2). The authors focus primarily on land use and environmental issues, since that is where most of their experience is. However, the principles discussed in the book apply to essentially all kinds of regional initiatives. The authors outline the strengths and weaknesses of a continuum of regional arrangements, from informal networks, to more formal partnerships, to regional institutions (11-22).</p> <p>After establishing the case for regional collaboration and outlining the various institutional forms it can take, the remainder of the book is a how-to, organized around “principles of effective regional collaboration” organized within a four stage model of diagnose, design, take [...]</p>