Boundary Facilitators

Individuals with certain skill sets to facilitate the flow of information and communication processes between people or stakeholder groups, which are physically, geographically, cognitively or culturally separated. Boundary facilitators receive different names, such as bridges, brokers, boundary spanners or mediators, depending on their specific role and power in the process (Long et al., 2013). While bridges and brokers facilitate the communication between two unlinked social actors, a boundary spanner is able to overcome a cultural boundary by using an appropriate language and cultural style and, thereby, facilitate the communication across it (Harris and Lyon, 2013). When a boundary spanner is able to facilitate the (epistemic) process of joint knowledge generation plays also the relevant role of ‘epistemediator’.