No One Wins Alone : Understanding Cross-sector Collaboration in Practice within DIF initiatives

Sammanfattning

Cross-sector collaboration is increasingly promoted as a solution to complex societal challenges such as youth unemployment, social exclusion, and unequal access to organised sport. While existing research and policy emphasise its potential benefits and outcomes, less attention has been given to how it is understood and enacted in practice by the actors involved. This study examines how cross-sector collaboration is constructed, interpreted, and experienced within two initiatives at the Danish Sports Confederation (DIF): get2sport and Startblokken. The study addresses how actors understand the social problems being targeted, how collaboration is organised across sectors, and how institutional differences are managed in practice. The study adopts a qualitative single-case design with two embedded cases and is grounded in a social constructivist perspective. Data were collected through 6 semi-structured interviews with actors involved in the initiatives and were complemented by the DIF‘s policy document and evaluation reports. The analysis follows a hermeneutic approach, involving a two-step process of restorying individual accounts and identifying patterns across cases, with elements of discourse analysis used to examine how collaboration is constructed across different sources. The findings show that collaboration is widely framed as necessary for addressing vulnerable youth and improving participation in education and employment, yet is experienced as a dynamic and negotiated process in practice. While the policy document and evaluation reports present collaboration as structured, coordinated, and outcome-oriented, interviewees describe it as dependent on relationships, local engagement, and ongoing negotiation. Differences emerge across organisational levels, with actors constructing collaboration in distinct ways based on their roles and contexts. The study contributes to the literature by highlighting the gap between how cross-sector collaboration is conceptualised in policy and how it is enacted in practice. It demonstrates that collaboration is not a fixed governance solution, but a socially constructed and context-dependent process shaped by multiple, and sometimes competing, interpretations.