Intermediaries from a transition management perspective: A case study on the offshore wind transition in Norway

Sustainability transitions are vital for addressing complex climate challenges, and intermediaries play a crucial role by connecting actors and facilitating change across multiple levels. Often working within broader ecologies, they help align interests, coordinate efforts, and support innovation. While previous research has explored their roles through approaches such as the multi-level perspective, strategic niche management, and technological innovation systems, their governance functions remain underexplored. This study applies a transition management perspective - emphasizing the coordinating role of government - to examine how transition intermediaries operate across governance levels and contribute to the implementation of policy-defined transition strategies. Focusing on Norway’s offshore wind transition, it employs an embedded single-case design to investigate the roles and collaborative dynamics of six government-employed intermediaries. Findings show that intermediary roles are shaped by formal mandates and institutional embedding, reflecting a deliberate mode of governance design. Intermediaries contribute and collaborate across strategic, tactical, operational, and reflexive governance activities, while navigating challenges such as institutional fragmentation and limited ministerial coordination. Informal collaboration mechanisms within the intermediary ecology emerge as key adaptive responses, helping to enhance coherence and learning across the system. This study extends the understanding of intermediaries in sustainability transitions by showing how government-employed intermediary ecologies function under fragmented conditions and enable feedback loops between implementation and strategic governance.