How do boundary spanners' presence affect innovation capacity of cities? A comparison of Barcelona, Copenhagen and Rotterdam

There has been a surge in the literature about governments and especially local governments that emphasizes that governments should change their governance style and work more with external stakeholders rather than steer top down. Authors then talk about the shift from government to governance and so, the argument goes; only by have many external contacts governments or the presence of boundary spanners, who mediate across the silos, can local governments innovate their service delivery and policy outcomes. But how do top civil servants actually see the managerial challenges of involving external stakeholders (e.g. citizens) and do they see boundary spanning roles being fulfilled? Which are according to most of the governance literature so crucial to reach out to citizens and other stakeholders and to achieve innovation in service delivery and policy outcomes? Data to answer these question come from the LIPSE project, a large European project on innovation, where top civil servants in Barcelona, Rotterdam and Copenhagen were being surveyed. They were asked on their level of frequency in external contacts, who there are getting information from and various questions about innovation that including what they see as either drivers or barriers for innovation, the number of boundary spanners presence and the innovativeness of their municipality The paper first look at the picture including all three city governments (n=319) and later at each municipality government (Barcelona, Copenhagen and Rotterdam) An analysis is made whether civil servants see boundary spanning activities in the cities and how this is related to perceived innovation performance in the three cities. We do see striking differences between the cities. Barcelona civil servants perceiving more boundary spanning activities but also see a clear relation between the reported presence of boundary spanning activities, drivers and barriers at the political and managerial level and the self-reported innovativeness of the cities.