Team Boundaries Research Articles

Multiple team membership and empowerment spillover effects: Can empowerment processes cross team boundaries?

In today's organizations, employees are often assigned as members of multiple teams simultaneously (i.e., multiple team membership), and yet we know little about important leadership and employee phenomena in such settings. Using a scenario-based experiment and 2 field studies of leaders and their employees in the People's Republic of China and the United States, we examined how empowering leadership exhibited by 2 different team leaders toward a single employee working on 2 different teams can spillover to affect that employee's psychological empowerment and subsequent proactivity across teams. Consistent across all 3 studies, we found that each of the team leaders' empowering leadership uniquely and positively influenced an employee's psychological empowerment and subsequent proactive behaviors. In the field studies, we further found that empowering leadership exhibited by one team leader influenced the psychological empowerment and proactive behaviors of their team member not only in that leader's team but also in the other team outside of that leader's stewardship. Finally, across studies, we found that empowering leadership exhibited on one team can substitute for lower levels of empowering leadership experienced in a different team led by a distinct leader. We discuss our contributions to the motivation, teams, and leadership literatures and provide practical guidance for leaders charged with managing employees that have multiple team memberships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Collaborative traceability management: a multiple case study from the perspectives of organization, process, and culture

Traceability is crucial for many activities in software and systems engineering including monitoring the development progress, and proving compliance with standards. In practice, the use and maintenance of trace links are challenging as artifacts undergo constant change, and development takes place in distributed scenarios with multiple collaborating stakeholders. Although traceability management in general has been addressed in previous studies, there is a need for empirical insights into the collaborative aspects of traceability management and how it is situated in existing development contexts. The study reported in this paper aims to close this gap by investigating the relation of collaboration and traceability management, based on an understanding of characteristics of the development effort. In our multiple exploratory case study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 individuals from 15 industrial projects. We explored which challenges arise, how traceability management can support collaboration, how collaboration relates to traceability management approaches, and what characteristics of the development effort influence traceability management and collaboration. We found that practitioners struggle with the following challenges: (1) collaboration across team and tool boundaries, (2) conveying the benefits of traceability, and (3) traceability maintenance. If these challenges are addressed, we found that traceability can facilitate communication and knowledge management in distributed contexts. Moreover, there exist multiple approaches to traceability management with diverse collaboration approaches, i.e., requirements-centered, developer-driven, and mixed approaches. While traceability can be leveraged in software development with both agile and plan-driven paradigms, a certain level of rigor is needed to realize its benefits and overcome challenges. To support practitioners, we provide principles of collaborative traceability management. The main contribution of this paper is empirical evidence of how culture, processes, and organization impact traceability management and collaboration, and principles to support practitioners with collaborative traceability management. We show that collaboration and traceability management have the potential to be mutually beneficial—when investing in one, also the other one is positively affected.

The Dark Side of Team Social Cohesion in NPD Team Boundary Spanning

Although team boundary spanning is conducive to achieving new product (NP) competitive advantage, these actions may not always deliver the expected performance. The current study makes an initial attempt to examine factors that undermine team boundary spanning positive effects on NP competitive advantage by proposing and testing a negative moderating effect of team social cohesion on the relationship between team boundary spanning and NP competitive advantage. Furthermore, the current study expects team social cohesion to have a stronger negative moderating effect on the relationship between team boundary spanning and NP competitive advantage when external task interdependence and project newness are high than when they are low. Data for this study come from 140 NPD projects developed and commercialized by Spanish manufacturing firms in high‐ and medium‐high‐technology sectors. The study’s results reveal a positive effect of team boundary spanning on NP competitive advantage. Furthermore, high levels of team social cohesion are shown to reduce the positive effect of team boundary spanning on NP competitive advantage. Finally, we found that project newness and external task interdependence accentuate the negative moderating effect of team social cohesion on the relationship between team boundary spanning and NP competitive advantage. The current study makes several contributions to the literature. First, findings from this study give us new insights into the significance of team boundary spanning to the success of NPs by revealing that boundary‐spanning activities are beneficial to achieving NP competitive advantage. Second, the study departs from existing research in that it exposes a dark side of team social cohesion for NPD teams engaged in boundary spanning activities. Last, the study expands extant research by proposing and demonstrating that project newness and external task interdependence bring about situations in which external groups present a threat to the collective identity of socially cohesive groups.

A Theoretical Approach to Female Team Leaders’ Boundary Work Choices

As organizations face progressively complex challenges, team leader boundary work that is relational and inclusive (i.e., work that relates to others across team boundaries and includes a wide variety of stakeholder perspectives and concerns) is more and more valued. These trends pose advantages and disadvantages for women team leaders. Although the desired leadership competencies align well with the communal qualities often attributed to and expected of women leaders, displaying boundary work behaviors that are relational and inclusive may paradoxically result in a questioning of women’s leadership competence by team members and parties external to the team. Moreover, concerns about gender stereotyping and discrimination may pressure women to adapt their boundary work behaviors to downplay or negate “femininity” as they lead. Reflective of these dilemmas, we propose that female team leaders experience conflicting internal motivations about the boundary work behaviors they display. Drawing from social role, impression management, and social identity perspectives, we examine the motives that drive women leaders to engage in or avoid boundary work that aligns with female gender roles, the contextual influences affecting the likelihood women leaders will act on these motives, and the implications of this boundary work for teams and female team leaders.

Selective permeability of boundaries in a knowledge brokering team.

Knowledge brokering teams are increasingly deployed in the public sector to promote coordination and integration across previously separated practices. Permeability of external boundaries surrounding such teams is, however, often taken for granted and has so far received relatively little attention. To address this gap, this article presents the findings of an in‐depth qualitative longitudinal case study of a knowledge brokering team operating in the fragmented healthcare context. It argues that boundary spanning, which increases the permeability of the team boundary, can coexist with the strategies of disengagement, such as boundary buffering and boundary reinforcement, which reduce permeability. The tension between these seemingly opposing strategies can be resolved through selective permeability, whereby the strength of the external team boundary varies depending on the out‐group with which the team interacts, the out‐group's mode of participation, the individual boundary spanner(s) deployed and the stage of the boundary spanning project.

Leaving the Nested Structure: The Influence of Work Relationships on Climate Strength

Climate strength indicates the degree of consensus (i.e., lack of variability) in the shared perceptions of individuals which are aggregated to the team level. An implicit assumption in this aggregation is that the nesting based on organizational structure is the closest representation of work relationships throughout the organization: individuals use their work relationships with their teammates and supervisors to make sense of their environments, thereby generating shared individual perceptions which attain a level of consensus. The nature of work has become more interdependent and connected, enabling work relationships to flourish. On the one hand, these changes further facilitate conditions to generate consensus. Yet I argue that these changes also: (a) increase the salience of relationships beyond team boundaries, and (b) differentially influence relationships within teams, both of which act as barriers to consensus. I explain and reconcile these conflicting perspectives, identifying alternate ways i...

Interteam Cooperation and Competition, Team Goal Orientation and Boundary Activities

Despite increasing scholarly interest in boundary activities in organizational teams, little research has explored mediating mechanisms between interteam cooperation and competition and boundary ac...

Team Boundary Spanning-Performance Relationship: Exploring Boundary Conditions

Team boundary spanning is theorized to be a key determinant of team effectiveness, but researchers have suggested that our understanding of the team boundary spanning phenomenon is underdeveloped. ...

Supplemental Material for Multiple Team Membership and Empowerment Spillover Effects: Can Empowerment Processes Cross Team Boundaries?

Supplemental Material for Multiple Team Membership and Empowerment Spillover Effects: Can Empowerment Processes Cross Team Boundaries?

Strategic Visibility in Enterprise Social Media: Implications for Network Formation and Boundary Spanning

Effective workgroups engage in team boundary spanning, that is, using communication ties as conduits to critical external resources. The proliferation of enterprise social media (ESM) and the associated increase in visibility of people, content, and interactions, has resulted in a widespread assumption that unlimited visibility improves boundary spanning. Consequently, the ESM literature has generally ignored the sentry functions of teams and failed to examine the possible strategic nature of visibility choices by ESM groups. Using log and content data from 655 ESM-based workgroups at a multinational enterprise, we contribute a deeper understanding of the distinct ways that ESM visibility—bounded or unbounded—is leveraged strategically to evoke diverse network structures, which in turn have implications for distinct boundary-spanning activities. Practically, these findings show that ESM present a unique opportunity for workgroups to simultaneously sustain multiple virtual spaces—with varying levels of visibility—through which they can manage their diverse boundary-spanning goals.

Crossing team boundaries: A theoretical model of team boundary permeability and a discussion of why it matters

Given the context in which teams work today, many teams are necessarily dynamic and permeable; that is, workers must be able to move quickly and easily in and out of teams, across team boundaries. We develop a model of team boundary permeability that incorporates the features of the team that give rise to boundary permeability, the outcomes experienced by teams with permeable boundaries, and moderators that serve to enhance the benefits and mitigate the liabilities of boundary permeability. In doing so, we extend theory on the fluid nature of teams. We conclude with implications for theory, directions for future research and implications for practice.

Detecting Emerging Activity-Based Working Traits through Wearable Technology

A recent trend in corporate real-estate is Activity-Based Working (ABW). The ABW concept removes designated desks but offers different work settings designed to support typical work activities. In this context there is still a need for objective data to understand the implications of these design decisions. We aim to contribute by using automated data collection to study how ABW’s principles impact office usage and dynamics. To this aim we analyse team dynamics and employees’ tie strength in relation to space usage and organisational hierarchy using data collected with wearable devices in a company adopting ABW principles. Our findings show that the office fosters interactions across team boundaries and among the lower levels of the hierarchy suggesting a strong lateral communication. Employees also tend to have low space exploration on a daily basis which is instead more prevalent during an average week and strong social clusters seem to be resisting the ABW principles of space dynamics. With the availability of two additional data sets about social encounters in traditional offices we highlight traits emerging from the application of ABW’s principles. In particular, we observe how the absence of designated desks might be responsible for more rapid dynamics inside the office. In more general terms, this work opens the door to new and scalable technology-based methodologies to study dynamic office usage and social interactions.

Subject coordinators as boundary managers: The impact on team learning and organizational outcomes

The present research examines the functioning of subject coordinators as boundary managers. According to this approach, effective team leaders move back and forth across the team boundary, by means of internal activities, which focus on internal team processes, and external activities, which focus on connecting the team with the external environment in which it operates. The research model suggests that internal and external boundary management activities will promote team learning, which in turn will advance team outcomes (innovation and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)) as well as organizational outcomes (academic achievements of students). Eighty-three subject coordinators and 260 teachers from elementary and junior high schools were studied. In general, structural equation modeling supported the mediating role of team learning in the relationship between boundary management and outcomes. The findings revealed positive relationships between internal and external activities and team learning, as well as between team learning and innovation and OCB. No significant relation was found between team learning and academic achievements. Implications, limitations, and future research directions pertaining to the boundary-related roles of subject coordinators are discussed.

Team boundary activity: a review and directions for future research

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is an examination of the literature on team boundary activity to trace how team boundary activity has evolved as a construct and examine the dimensions of team boundary activity and their relationships. It highlights the need for a deeper examination of the dimensions of buffering and reinforcement, and why buffering and reinforcement are required. It presents the case of why it is important to study this topic and maps out areas for future research.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews conceptual and empirical papers published on team boundary activity in reputed journals between the years 1984 and 2016.FindingsThe focus of research in team boundary activity has been on external interactions of the team (boundary spanning), and very few papers have studied the activities through which the team defines and defends its borders (boundary strengthening). These boundary-strengthening activities can be equally important for innovation and learning in externally dependent teams. Further, there is a need to clearly distinguish these constructs from other variables like team identification. Another area that has here-to not been researched is the relationships between the dimensions of team boundary activity. Last, there is a need to consider a wider range of antecedents, outcomes and moderators of team boundary activity.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is based on past empirical and conceptual papers, identified using search terms such as team boundary activity, team boundary spanning and external communication. Other related areas can also be explored for identifying variables of interest.Originality/valueAs opposed to previous reviews which focused mainly on team boundary spanning, this paper considers all dimensions of team boundary activity, with special focus on buffering and reinforcement. It proposes a 2 × 2 framework to explain the effect of boundary-spanning and boundary-strengthening activities on the achievement of team objectives. It examines the cyclical nature of relationship between team boundary activity and team performance. It highlights measurement issues in the area of team boundary activity.

When Team Identity Helps Innovation and When It Hurts: Team Identity and Its Relationship to Team and Cross‐Team Innovative Behavior

Although the success of team‐based organizations requires innovative behavior within and across teams, little research has considered how to foster both types of activity. This is problematic as strong team attachments such as team identification may have mixed effects on team innovative behavior, and may even negatively impact cross‐team innovative behavior. The present research explains these mixed effects through intra‐ and intergroup aspects of social identity theory and the concept of team reflexivity. Effects of team identification on team innovative behavior were expected to be contingent upon team reflexivity, such that team identification would be positively related to team innovative behavior only when team reflexivity was high. Where a team's innovative behavior involves working across team boundaries with other teams, i.e., cross‐team innovative behavior, this interaction between team identification and reflexivity was further expected to be qualified by perceived interdependence with another team. In a sample of 61 Turkish research and development (R&D) teams comprising 305 employees and 61 team leaders, the association between team identity and team innovative behavior was moderated by team reflexivity as predicted. Further, team identity was positively associated with cross‐team innovative behavior only when reflexivity and perceived interdependence between teams were both high, and negatively associated when reflexivity was low and perceived interdependence between teams was high.

Working at the Boundary: A Meta Analysis of Boundary Spanning and Team Performance

This meta analysis reviews 22 years (1992-2014) of boundary spanning teams research to analyze the relationship between team boundary spanning activities and performance. It tests several team- and study-level contextual and methodological variables as moderators of this boundary spanning – team performance relationship. The results reveal that boundary spanning activities by teams do relate to improved team performance outcomes. However, this depends upon the team’s size, team composition, and on the type of boundary spanning measure used. The implications and limitations of these results are discussed.

Study on the Relationship between the Team Boundary Work and Team Performance—Based on the Moderating Effect of Boundaryless Mindset

Team performance is an important indicator of organization development and management practice. But team boundary work is an important factor that affects the achievement of team performance. How to play the positive role of team boundary work on team performance has always been a difficult problem in research and management practice .This paper focuses on team management practice in the perspective of boundaryless mindset. It takes 104 teams as the research objects and studies the relationship between team boundary work and team performance. Through empirical studies, the results indicate that the relationship between team boundary work and team performance is positive. Besides, the boundaryless mindset has a moderating effect on team performance in the two dimensions of the team boundary work. Therefore, this paper enriches the studies on team boundary work and it also provides enlightenment and guidance in the application of the boundaryless mindset in the practices of team management.

Assembling the Right Team—Organizational Structure in the ACA Era

The health care community is seeking ways to improve outcomes by formation of teams to leverage diverse expertise, skills, and training. The concept that diversity among team members improves performance is well accepted. Nevertheless, it is challenging to put the concept into action. Bringing people together across disciplines increases the pool of available knowledge but coordination becomes difficult as teams grow in size. In the setting of complex care, teams must gather information from multiple subspecialists, synthesize the information acquired, come to decisions, and execute a plan. Complex care often involves input from and coordination with other departments, so information must flow beyond team boundaries. Reporting relationships add complexity since team members may belong to distinct departments and many individuals belong to multiple teams. Given these potential constraints, it is no surprise that putting groups together and calling them a team does not ensure that the team will be effective. Effective teams require a common purpose, organizational support, and ties, which permit trust and foster mutual accountability among team members. So leaders must acknowledge and recognize the complexity of the system in which the team operates and helps to define and foster strategies to optimize team function.

Rethinking Team Boundaries

Boundedness – the distinction between members and non-members – has long been a central defining feature of a team. In this perspective paper, we start by discussing classic conceptualizations of team boundaries, which emphasize the importance of boundary clarity. Yet many teams are more fluid, more overlapping and more dispersed − and consequently their boundaries are less clear − than ever before. We review recent literature that begins to illuminate the changing nature of team boundaries, and argue that fluidity, overlap, and dispersion have important implications for teams through their effects on members’ shared identity and mutual understanding. We propose that today’s teams can be usefully characterized as tightly versus loosely bounded, rather than as clearly bounded by definition, and conclude by examining the implications of the changing nature of team boundaries for future theoretical and empirical research on teams.

Facts with feelings – social workers' experiences of sharing information across team and agency borders to safeguard children

AbstractThis paper reports findings from a psychosocially informed case study of information sharing across team and agency borders, carried out in three children and family social work teams within one local authority. The study investigated practitioners' understanding and experiences of information sharing, the tasks, processes and technologies involved, as well as perceived barriers and facilitators. It also considered how the emotional and social dynamics of working contexts could impinge upon information work.Practitioners described information tasks relating to collecting, interpreting, communicating and recording information, guided by the demands of rigid organizational protocols. Performance of these tasks was, however, infused by the emotional complexities of child protection work, presenting a number of challenges for practitioners seeking robust and reliable information in the midst of ambiguity, complexity and heightened emotions. For practitioners across all teams, information work, and information itself, was both cognitive and affective and often at odds with linear processes for its exchange across team boundaries, designed to filter out all but hard evidence. Increased recognition of the dual nature (facts and feelings) of information and information work, throughout the safeguarding process, has potential to enhance the generation of shared understandings and collaborative practice across team and agency borders.