The situatedness of dilemmas in boundary spaces: uncovering paradoxical conditions for increasing effectiveness through transdisciplinary research approaches

Organising ‘boundary spaces’ has become a practice for tackling wicked issues in societal planning. Such spaces bring together diverse actors to intentionally staged problem formulation and management processes. However, despite clear goals, boundary spaces face challenges. Moreover, the processes often generate dilemmas and paradoxes that participating actors are incapable of managing within the boundary space itself. In some situations, such tensions can amplify challenges or prevent results from impacting participating organisations. Using a transdisciplinary (TD) research approach, the aim of this article is to develop a better understanding of the different dilemmas and paradoxes that surround or arise within boundary spaces and thereby contribute to increasing their effectiveness in tackling the issues they were created to address. This article originates from a TD research project that investigated four different boundary spaces of societal planning and research in Sweden. The project employed an iterative TD process that combined theoretical contributions from planning- and organisation studies with practical experiences from societal planning, and facilitation. The position of boundary spaces as being ‘between’ actors – ‘between’ in terms of representation and decision making – calls for further attention to the situatedness of dilemmas and paradoxes in space and time. Our approach resulted in an analytic framework where the dilemmas and paradoxes of boundary spaces were categorised as contextual, relational, process- or transformation-related. The results point at the relations between what we see as three interrelated tensions that ground the existence and functioning of boundary spaces: the mismatch dilemma, the commoning dilemma and the collaboration paradox.