Abstract
Organizations today need to adapt their operations for a more sustainable future, and the transition management literature has highlighted the need for individuals who can collaborate with others to find new paths forward. Essentially, these individuals are boundary spanners with specific skills and competences to bridge diverging perspectives and facilitate knowledge dissemination and integration. Such individuals become critical change agents in organizations and essential in preparing the organization for sustainability transitions. The purpose of this study is to explore how organizations can enable and encourage individuals to take on this role and develop the skills and competences needed to become boundary spanners. Based on a case study set in a large Canadian energy corporation striving to shift towards more sustainable operations, our paper explores the emergence of boundary spanners, focusing on the effects of a design training program in supporting such roles in the organization. Our findings outline essential characteristics of boundary spanners; through illustrative career trajectories of four individuals participating in the training program, we show how the training program contributed to the emergence of boundary spanners.
Highlights
Transitioning to a more sustainable society is a challenging task for organizations as well as individuals, requiring a managerial approach capable of addressing such complexity [1,2]
Organizations seeking to engage in sustainable transitions must rely on boundary spanners acting as internal change agents with specific skills [4]
Spanners acting as internal change agents with specific skills [4]
Summary
Transitioning to a more sustainable society is a challenging task for organizations as well as individuals, requiring a managerial approach capable of addressing such complexity [1,2]. The transition management literature has highlighted the need for frontrunners taking part in transition processes, an exclusive group of individuals with quite specific characteristics [5,7,8,9]. They should be visionaries and frontrunners, openminded and able to look beyond their own domain or working area. Such individuals are essentially boundary spanners—individuals with specific relational skills and competences to bridge diverging perspectives as well as facilitate the dissemination and integration of new information and knowledge into an organization [10,11,12,13,14]. Being a boundary spanner entails navigating power dynamics in managing complexity, understanding motives, roles and responsibilities in “the big picture”, having insights into organizational strategies
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
