Authors: Miguel Soberón, Irene Ezquerra-Lázaro, Teresa Sánchez-Chaparro, Jaime Moreno-Serna , Gabriella Dóci
Published/Created by: Elsevier | Journal of Cleaner Production Get rights and content Under a Creative Commons license
Category: Sustainability
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.138964
Transition management literature acknowledges that urban transitions are influenced by the interplay between a wide variety of actors operating under network governance.
This means that municipalities must move from the traditional roles of commanders or implementers to those of initiators and facilitators of transition initiatives involving multiple actors and sectors. However, the structural and cultural challenges in municipalities hinder their ability to collaborate in network environments.
Through a case study, this study analyses the role of transition intermediaries as expert organizations in building collaborations that support municipalities in developing their relational collaboration potential. The results show that besides building successful collaborations, intermediation work should focus on creating inter-organizational spaces where municipalities can learn how to collaborate relationally.
However, transition intermediaries do not replace municipalities in their facilitation role in the transition but support them until they are ready to assume that role.
Highlights
- Inter-organizational learning spaces support the building of collaboration capability.
- Intermediation builds conditions for learning about collaboration while collaborating.
- Systematic alignment of interorganizational and intraorganizational spaces is crucial.
- Intermediaries do not replace the municipality as facilitator of network governance.
- Collaboration capability is perceived to be strongly linked to trust.
