Boundary spanning in the context of stakeholder engagement in collaborative water management.

Boundary spanners are individuals able to reach across organizational borders to build relationships and interconnections to help better manage complex problems. What is not clear, however, are the skills that allow boundary spanners to cross diverse scales, sectors, and organizations. To address this gap, we use a qualitative case study approach to examine evidence for how boundary spanning skills are implemented in the context of stakeholder engagement for addressing water challenges in agricultural settings. We employ a hybrid deductive-inductive thematic analysis approach to examine interview data collected with 25 stakeholder participants as well as direct observation of engagement behavior. Interview instruments were designed to elicit responses related to six deductively derived skills of boundary spanning: relationship builder, authentic leadership, trustworthiness, autonomy, perspective-taking, and effective science communication. Our inductive analysis identified evidence for three additional boundary spanning skills. Our study finds that some boundary spanning skills were exhibited more than others, and their frequency of use varied throughout the engagement process, and certain skills were used interchangeably. This research provides guidance on what boundary spanning looks like in action, and thus provides guidance on identifying and enhancing these skills in stakeholder engagement for water resource management.

Changing Flows: Sociotechnical Tinkering for Adaptive Water Management.

The Western United States is experiencing historic drought, increasing pressure on water management systems. Agricultural production that relies on surface water flows is therefore imperiled, requiring new innovations and partnerships in order to adapt and survive. In Arizona, some agriculture continues to rely on historic, low-tech irrigation infrastructure such as hand-dug open ditches that divert river water to flood fields. These ditch systems are managed through both formal ditch companies and informal associations. To address changing water availability and needs, ditch users regularly "tinker" with water infrastructure, experimenting and making changes beyond the original infrastructure plans. Such changes are informed and driven by local social relationships and realities of the physical infrastructure. These dynamics are critical to understanding the adaptive capacity and flexibility of the water system; however, they are challenging to recognize and record. In this paper, we apply the emerging conceptualization of sociotechnical tinkering to examine the adaptive management of irrigation ditches in the Verde Valley of Arizona. We find evidence that water users frequently tinker with their water delivery and monitoring infrastructure to respond to and anticipate changes in water availability. Viewed through the lens of sociotechnical tinkering, these interactions are understood as the material manifestations of situated practice and actor agency within a water management system. This case study contributes to literature on adaptive environmental management and the hydrosocial cycle.

Advancing the scholarship and practice of stakeholder engagement in working landscapes: a co-produced research agenda.

Participatory approaches to science and decision making, including stakeholder engagement, are increasingly common for managing complex socio-ecological challenges in working landscapes. However, critical questions about stakeholder engagement in this space remain. These include normative, political, and ethical questions concerning who participates, who benefits and loses, what good can be accomplished, and for what, whom, and by who. First, opportunities for addressing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion interests through engagement, while implied in key conceptual frameworks, remain underexplored in scholarly work and collaborative practice alike. A second line of inquiry relates to research-practice gaps. While both the practice of doing engagement work and scholarly research on the efficacy of engagement is on the rise, there is little concerted interplay among 'on-the-ground' practitioners and scholarly researchers. This means scientific research often misses or ignores insight grounded in practical and experiential knowledge, while practitioners are disconnected from potentially useful scientific research on stakeholder engagement. A third set of questions concerns gaps in empirical understanding of the efficacy of engagement processes and includes inquiry into how different engagement contexts and process features affect a range of behavioral, cognitive, and decision-making outcomes. Because of these gaps, a cohesive and actionable research agenda for stakeholder engagement research and practice in working landscapes remains elusive. In this review article, we present a co-produced research agenda for stakeholder engagement in working landscapes. The co-production process involved professionally facilitated and iterative dialogue among a diverse and international group of over 160 scholars and practitioners through a yearlong virtual workshop series. The resulting research agenda is organized under six cross-cutting themes: (1) Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; (2) Ethics; (3) Research and Practice; (4) Context; (5) Process; and (6) Outcomes and Measurement. This research agenda identifies critical research needs and opportunities relevant for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike. We argue that addressing these research opportunities is necessary to advance knowledge and practice of stakeholder engagement and to support more just and effective engagement processes in working landscapes. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42532-022-00132-8.