BRIDGING THE IMPLEMENTATION GAP Boundary spanning mechanisms in Radboud University’s waste management

Abstract

Public organisations increasingly adopt quantitative sustainability targets while simultaneously failing to operationalise them. This implementation gap reflects a structural conflict between dominant commercial-bureaucratic logics and emerging sustainability logics a tension that boundary-spanning mechanisms are theoretically positioned to resolve. This study examines how such mechanisms function, or fail to function, in practice through a qualitative case study of waste management governance at a large Dutch university. This is done by using a Participatory Action Research design combining retrospective document analysis, procurement contract review, and seven semi-structured stakeholder interviews. The findings reveal that boundary-spanning mechanisms are structurally absent. Formal governance mechanisms were never institutionalised, and informal coordination sustained for seven years by a single intrinsically motivated coordinator collapsed entirely upon her retirement. Three empirical contributions emerge. First, the study documents the boundary spanner dependency trap in longitudinal detail: individual relational capital creates an illusion of systemic progress while the underlying governance architecture remains unbuilt. Second, it identifies financial invisibility the tenant model that removes waste costs from faculty invoices as an upstream governance design failure not yet theorised in the Sustainable Public Procurement literature. Third, an internal natural experiment in the Food & Beverage department demonstrates that sustainability becomes structurally embedded when procurement and operational responsibility are integrated within a single unit. Together, these findings reframe the implementation gap as a governance design problem rather than a motivational one, with implications for higher education institutions and public sector organisations more broadly.