Balancing the Boundary: Sustaining Self-Managing Modes of Work Within Hierarchical Organizations

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of how self-managing teams can sustain their alternative mode of organizing within a more hierarchical organizational setting. We look at this issue as a phenomenon of intra-organizational boundary work. By drawing on communicative under-standing of boundary work, we specifically examine the communicative practices used to negotiate intra-organizational boundaries. Based on a qualitative case study of a self-managing team within the more hierarchical environment of an international medical technology company, we show how the team uses communicative practices of nurturing, exposing and blending-in their self-managing mode of organizing to negotiate their internal boundaries. Through this communicative boundary negotiation and balancing, the team was able to maintain its mode of organizing in an otherwise largely traditionally organized firm.