Search Results
Background:
Brokers, intermediaries, and boundary spanners (BIBS) bridge research and policy or practice, and can elevate the role of evidence in decision making. However, there is limited integration of the literature across different sectors to understand the strategies that BIBS use, the skills needed to carry out these strategies, and the expected outcomes of these strategies.
Aims and objectives:
In this review, we characterise the strategies, skills, and outcomes of BIBS across the literature in education, environmental, health and other relevant sectors.
Methods:
We included 185 conceptual and review papers written in English that included descriptions or conceptualisations of BIBS in the context of knowledge transfer or research use in the education, environmental, health, or other relevant sectors (for example, social services, international development). For each included paper, we extracted and coded information on sector, BIBS strategies, skills, and outcomes.
Findings:
Our review revealed five strategies used by BIBS that were emphasised in the literature. Specifically, 79.5% of papers mentioned facilitating relationships, 75.7% mentioned disseminating evidence, 56.8% mentioned finding alignment, 48.6% mentioned capacity building, and 37.3% mentioned advising decisions as strategies used by BIBS. Additionally, papers described skills and expected outcomes that were common across these strategies as well as those that were unique to specific strategies.
Discussion and conclusions:
We discuss implications of these findings for understanding how BIBS interface with knowledge users and producers as well as directions for future research on BIBS and the professionalisation of BIBS roles.
Background:
A growing literature focuses on the roles of brokers, intermediaries, and boundary spanners (BIBS) in addressing the challenges of transferring research evidence between the research and practice or policy communities.
Aims and objectives:
In this systematic review, we examined two research questions: (1) where, how, and when are different BIBS terms (broker, intermediary, and boundary spanner) used? and (2) which BIBS terms get defined, and when these terms are defined, who are BIBS and what do they do?
Methods:
We conducted literature searches designed to capture articles on BIBS and the transfer of research evidence. We extracted information about eligible articles’ characteristics, use of BIBS terms, and definitions of BIBS terms.
Findings:
The search revealed an initial pool of 667 results, of which 277 articles were included after screening. Although we coded 430 separate uses of BIBS terms, only 37.2% of these uses provided explicit definitions. The terms, ‘broker’ and ‘brokerage’, were commonly applied in the health sector to describe a person engaged in multiple functions. The term, ‘intermediary’, was commonly applied in the education sector to describe an organisation engaged in dissemination. Finally, the terms ‘boundary spanner’ and ‘boundary spanning’ were commonly applied in the environment sector to describe people or organisations that engage in relationship building.
Discussion and conclusions:
Results demonstrated that when BIBS were defined, there were important (albeit implicit) distinctions between terms. Based on these results, we identify archetypal definitions for brokers, intermediaries, and boundary spanners and offer recommendations for future research.
