P10 SIG Complexity and Network Governance

Panel Member(s) & Contact Details
 

Corresponding Chair: Prof. Joris Voets, Department of Public Governance and Management, Ghent University (joris.voets@ugent.be)

Prof. Robyn Keast, School of Business and Tourism, Southern Cross University, Australia

Prof. Erik-Hans Klijn, Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, The Netherlands

Prof. Chris Koliba. Edwin O. Stene School of Public Affairs and Administration University of Kansas, USA

Prof. Robin Lemaire, E.J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University, USA

Summary

This panel from the SIG on Complexity and Network Governance (C&NG) invites research on how collaborative, adaptive, and digitally enabled governance systems address societal challenges like climate change, equity, and wellbeing. It welcomes theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions that explore innovations in network governance, including AI, behavioral approaches, and knowledge co-production. The panel also fosters practitioner engagement and aims to develop a special issue in collaboration with the journal Complexity, Governance & Networks.

Decsription

The SIG C&NG connects scholars and practitioners studying complexity and network governance worldwide. At the IRSPM-conference, we organize panel sessions dealing with theoretical, empirical, methodological, and practice-related topics.

For the 2026 C&NG panel, we welcome papers on our regular topics and papers that connect those topics to the overall conference theme “Beyond Boundaries: Wellbeing, Innovation and the Future of Public Management":

• Introduce, discuss, develop, and apply established and new theoretical perspectives in studying complexity and network governance, including social capital in networks.
• Raise questions, offer new insights, and encourage debate as to which established perspectives prove valuable to tackle questions about how network governance can be organized and managed, (the lack of) performance(s) of collaborative arrangements, to understand and develop complex adaptive systems, etc.

• Identify and discuss methodological challenges and new ideas on how to develop our knowledge on C&NG: e.g., are new QCA-approaches being used? Has the behavioural and experimental trend in PA also extended into C&NG-research? To what extent are methods like agent-based modelling being developed further and applied?
• How does AI come into play in studying, mapping, analysing, visualising and translating C&NG?
• Bring new and interesting empirical studies to the table, especially studies that showcase the extent and reach of novel empirical work that substantiates or even questions what we think we know about C&NG.
• Inspire and reflect on knowledge in action, what practitioners ‘do’ with academic C&NG-insights in the real world, identify the conditions for making such knowledge transfer work, and how practitioners can become more active co-producers of C&NG.
• Discuss how C&NG are functional in understanding and solving main societal issues like climate change, loss of biodiversity, integrated care, global security, and social (in)equity. Particular papers connecting C&NG to wellbeing and innovation are also welcomed. 
• Reflect on how epistemic disruption (e.g., new knowledge systems, data imaginaries, decolonial perspectives) alters valid network knowledge and governance wisdom.
• Explore how collaborative and networked arrangements influence psychosocial safety, job autonomy, and relational trust in public sector workplaces, and how well-being metrics can serve as feedback loops for adaptive public management.

Authors present accepted papers in thematic panel sessions, and appointed discussants ensure relevant feedback (each paper presenter reviews at least one other paper). Panel session chairs formulate more overarching insights and challenges to broader discussions around these main categories and themes. We actively engage with the editors of the journal ‘COMPLEXITY, GOVERNANCE & NETWORKS’ to explore a special issue from this panel and builds robust connections with the ASPA Section on Complexity and Network Studies to strengthen the broader collaboration between it and our SIG.

Relevance

The relevance is twofold: on the one hand, we have been working as a SIG in the past years to connect scholars and practitioners around the globe that either study (strategies to deal with) complex issues,  collaborative and network practices, and/or apply complexity (e.g. complex adaptive systems) and network theories (e.g. resource dependency, governance network theory) and methods (e.g. social network analysis, QCA) to various policy fields at all levels of government. Based on the popularity in the past years (with +50 abstracts submitted and +25 papers accepted in 2025), this is still a core theme in the study of public management. In 2026, we will particularly welcome papers that connect/apply these complexity and network perspectives to wellbeing and innovation, but also papers that focus on future developments and questions (e.g. how complexity and network governance might increasingly come into conflict with the rise in parts of the world of strong and hierarchical leadership and management practices). With co-chairs from different parts of the world, including Australia (and New-Zealand until last year), we expect to have a successful panel in 2026. For the 2026 edition, we will also explore to strengthen the team by adding a ‘guest co-chair’ from the broader region.