Global Strategy: Boundary Spanning in Global Organizations

Abstract

In today’s interconnected world, there is ever greater need for developing new ways of coordinating, organizing, and reconfiguring of organizational structures and routines across inter and intra-organizational boundaries. Consequently, the boundary spanning function has become critical in global organizations. Despite its importance, there is limited scholarly attention to the topic of boundary spanning. Existing research on boundary spanning is mainly conceptual or based on a limited number of case studies. The research suggests that a small number of managers with unique skill sets or personality traits have emerged as critical facilitators for cross-boundary coordination. However, boundary spanning phenomenon is much more complex than the simple treatment offered by the extant literature, and provides an opportunity for moving beyond emblematic borrowing of individual level theories and applying them to organizational level research. With this panel, we seek to advance the understanding of the structure and evolution of boundaries in and across global organizations and the roles that individual managers play in organizational development and coordination processes in multinational corporations.