Municipal and regional leaders' achievements for synchronised sustainability transitions are still not enough. Systemic, systematic and strategic cross-sectoral collaboration and co-creation are needed. However, sectors isolated in silos leads to suboptimal measures and strategies, and a reductionist view on what hinders and enables joint action towards full sustainability. Consequently, methodological support for addressing the coordinative challenge is often not asked for. This study investigates the observed reductionist perspective as foundation for developing enhanced methodological support for strategic sustainable development (SSD) and further aimed to gain insight into how leaders can be better supported to understand their current reality of barriers and enablers for cross-sectoral SSD work and to prototype such support. Results from fieldwork with leaders in six municipalities and regions suggest that both frequency and depth of barriers and enablers in relation to elements for SSD are insufficient. Nine categories were identified and combined with SSD core elements into a diagnostic tool.

Municipal and regional governments can play a key role in global society's transition towards sustainability. However, municipal leaders often lack a sufficient overview of sustainability and thereby the capacity to coordinate efforts across sectors. Several municipal planning frameworks are available but vary greatly in terms of definitions, scope, and hands-on advice on processes. To complement and unify approaches, the framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD) has been developed. It utilizes backcasting from operational boundary conditions for the full scope of social and ecological sustainability. This study aims to evaluate a recently developed model for long-term implementation of FSSD across sectors for more cohesive cooperation towards sustainability. This is done through participatory action research (PAR) in ten Swedish municipalities and regions. The evaluation is done to examine if the implementation model (i) lives up to its purpose to help sectors cooperate effectively by using the FSSD as a shared mental model, (ii) aid the handling of previously identified barriers to strategic sustainable development in municipalities and regions, (iii) may contain barriers of its own for appropriate use and (iv) has room for improvement. We used observations, dialogues, and surveys to capture the strengths, weaknesses, enablers, and barriers of the preliminary implementation model. While the compliance of the model varied, our findings show a general appreciation and identified the needs for the approach. From experiencing barriers for the application of the model, practitioners provided several ideas for additional support, such as assessment and alignment support of on-going work and further developed guiding material. In a second phase of the PAR project, application of the implementation model will continue, and such additional support will be developed and evaluated. © 2020 by the authors.

To systematically address the sustainability challenge, local and regional government leaders are key actors to facilitate action-oriented dialogues between practitioners from different sectors and disciplines. However, to address sustainability in collaboration is a complex challenge and leaders as well as practitioners need methodological support. This study is an off shot of an Action Research project that tested and developed an implementation model for cross-sector strategic transitions towards sustainability. While the implementation model as such gained appreciation for the scientifically robust overarching approach, our learnings from four years of action research with ten Swedish municipalities and regions point to needs of additional support regarding application guidelines for the methodology to be autonomously viable after introductions and moderated sessions facilitated by the research team. Example needs include support for capacity building for strategic sustainable development (SSD), advise for how to recruit leaders into the process upfront and support for valuing and aligning previous and on-going work for sustainability. This paper presents such support. It is based on a combination of conceptual SSD analyses and dialogue with initiated people within local or regional governments. In the dialogue, participants were supported to identify gaps in terms of capacity for an SSD approach to improve cross-sector strategies towards the full scope of social and ecological sustainability, and to better align existing methods, processes, and routines into cohesive actions. The procedure was designed, tested, and refined through interaction within one municipality. The feedback was that through applying the support, government leaders can better prepare for and prioritize their strategic actions for sustainability and search for good examples and best practices with enhanced precision. Forthcoming research will test and further refine the support.