Course Leaders: Carys Evans WG; Scott Orford, Jesse Heley, Ian Stafford, Sally Power and Chris Taylor, WISERD, and Marcus Longley, University of Glamorgan.
A clear theme that has been identified within the first 18 months of the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) has been the common interest across research areas around the impact that organisational and institutional boundaries have had in the development and delivery of policy across Wales. Increasingly the rhetoric of Government at the local, devolved and UK levels has stressed the importance of developing ‘joined-up’ or ‘integrated’ policy-making and delivery which responds to so called ‘wicked problems’. However, these issues do not neatly map onto existing institutional structures and processes – which in themselves vary substantially across policy sectors. This half day workshop brought together researchers from across the WISERD network and its partners to explore the role that institutional and organisational boundaries play within the contemporary policy setting within Wales. In particular the event considered a range of interlinked themes:
- The extent to which contrasting institutional and organisational boundaries act as a barrier or obstacle to ‘joined-up’ policy-making across and within policy sectors;
- The impact of the reorganisation or redrawing of institutional and organisational boundaries on policy-making and delivery; and
- The influence of the new concepts, such as ‘fuzzy boundaries’, across policy sectors