Inter‐Professional Collaboration through Boundary Work: Unfolding the “Doing” of Collaboration in Public Service

ABSTRACT

Over the years, public service has entered a transition into collaboration as a means of accomplishing common goals for the good of society. Collaborative work across professions has long played an essential role in providing integrated services in response to complex societal problems. Inter‐professional collaboration involves integrating different skills and competencies, which is described as a crucial factor for accomplishing shared goals and effective services to society. Although contemporary research emphasizes the need for such collaboration, it is seemingly difficult to achieve in practice due to boundaries between professions and organizations. Overcoming boundaries is often discussed in association to the notion of boundary work as a means of influencing boundaries and accomplishing collaborative work. There is a call for more research to understand what drives the processes and practices behind collaboration and especially how collaboration is practiced through boundary work at the micro‐level between professionals in specific organizational contexts. Drawing on a one‐year observational study from the perspective of a new composition of professionals in a recently formed multi‐professional mobile community care team, this article aims to address how inter‐professional collaboration across boundaries is developed at the micro‐level of daily work from start. The findings suggest that professionals in interdependent organizational work can direct their energy away from competition, rivalry, and territorial thinking through multiple boundary works at play. Inter‐professional collaboration across boundaries is developed at the micro‐level of daily work as a continuous, interdependent, and flexible process of nine practices under three parallel modes of collaborative boundary work in flow, leading to a notion of “we”, “them” and “us”. The inter‐related practices and parallel modes enable the construction of an identity, the navigation of a balanced collaboration with partners, and the development of a shared idea regarding how services are to be provided to a third party. The article contributes theoretically by extending the notion of collaborative boundary work to a continuous, interdependent, and flexible process where multiple boundary works unfold simultaneously through a series of inter‐related practices and parallel modes. In addition, it contributes empirically by illuminating a case of successful early inter‐professional collaboration to learn from in other public service contexts. The practical implication for concerned managers and decision‐makers is to support promising inter‐professional collaboration by allowing a bottom‐up approach, opportunities for creativity, and flexibility in control.