PROFESSIONALS AS KNOWLEDGE BROKERS: THE LIMITS OF AUTHORITY IN HEALTHCARE COLLABORATION
研究医疗合作中临床专业人士担任知识经纪人时面临的挑战，发现他们通过依赖额外桥梁、遵循现有做法和从促进转向执行三种策略来应对，揭示了专业权威在知识经纪中的局限。
Abstract Professionals with managerial responsibilities are often seen as natural boundary spanners, brokering knowledge between the professional and managerial domains. However, the tensions implicit in their knowledge brokering activities, especially when the latter are formalized, remain under‐researched. Using interviews and observational data, we examine the case of an inter‐organizational collaborative research partnership that deployed clinical professionals as designated knowledge brokers across multiple sites. We identify three strategies that such hybrid professionals utilized to surmount challenges associated with knowledge brokering in the fragmented healthcare context: (1) relying on additional boundary ‘bridges’; (2) conforming to existing ways of doing things; and (3) shifting from ‘facilitating’ to ‘doing’. An analysis of these strategies highlights the tensions between different dimensions of brokering reinforced by macro‐level institutional arrangements, the intertwining of formalized and emergent elements of brokering as a collectively enacted phenomenon, and the limitations of knowledge brokering professionals arising from their professional expertise and authority.