Boundary-spanning Practices Research Articles

Boundary-spanning practices of system leaders in China: Enabling conditions and inherent tensions

There is currently considerable interest in system leadership and how it can support school change at scale. System leadership aims to move learning beyond school boundaries through leveraging experience and expertise. The success of system leadership depends on how key educational players can move effectively between and across traditional educational boundaries. China's education system has long-established system infrastructure to support boundary spanning. This paper presents three selected different types of system leaders who span across boundaries to build relationships, interconnections and interdependencies to enhance collective teacher capacity across their systems. The paper argues that working in a centralised, top-down system creates enabling conditions which facilitate boundary practices. It further suggests that such conditions form tensions which risk reproducing static systems when leadership is enacted hierarchically. Enabling conditions include established routines, roles and values which empower boundary spanners to leverage their expertise. System tensions can arise between the centre and periphery, between responsibility and professional power and between diversity and homogeneity.

Practices of strategic alignment in and between innovation project portfolios

Strategic alignment of project portfolios concerns the match between projects in the portfolio and the organization's strategy. It is often considered either as a selection criterion when creating the project portfolio or as a performance indicator when assessing success. Organizations pursue optimal strategic alignment while retaining responsiveness to changes in the environment. The problem guiding this study is the need to understand how strategic alignment occurs in practice in the work of project portfolio management in the context of multiple project portfolios. We explore large firms' practices of strategic alignment and cross-portfolio interplay in the innovation project portfolios of three industrial firms. The findings reveal social, mechanistic, and structural practices of portfolios' strategic alignment and sharing, synergy creation, and boundary-spanning practices in cross-portfolio interplay. Strategic alignment is reported as a dynamic, continuous activity in the work of managers and personnel, with versatile practices that drive both efficiency and renewal.

How to engage the crowd for innovation in a restricted market? A practice perspective of Google's boundary spanning in China

PurposeTechnological firms increasingly depend on open innovation to compete in hypercompetitive markets. To openly engage the creativity of a multitude of private actors, firms can rely on crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing challenges global companies as they span organizational boundaries to attract multiple local partners. Global companies must engage in boundary spanning to successfully communicate and create a sense of community with smaller local partners despite status and cultural differences. The collaboration between Google and developers in China deserves to be studied in particular, because it operates within a restricted market.Design/methodology/approachThis paper argues that crowdsourcing for innovation on a global scale requires effective boundary spanning capabilities. These boundary-spanning practices ensure smooth cooperation with the crowd and solve problems relating to differences in status and organizational contexts. This study applies Bourdieu's theory of practice including the concept of capital (economic, intellectual, social and symbolic) to understand the social relationships between Google and a growing community of Chinese developers. It also draws on a case study including ten semistructured interviews, which have been triangulated with internal documents and data from selected websites.FindingsFour types of capital (symbolic, intellectual, social and economic) have been identified as important devices to understand the sources of power and the stakes of Googlers and developers in the joint field. These types of capital contribute to structure the social fields in which developers and Google cooperate and their practice. The success of the collaboration between Google and Chinese developers can arguably be attributed to Google's ability to create boundary-spanning activities in order to reduce the endowment differential in the four types of capital and improve their communication. Therefore, this research provides a deep and conceptualized description of boundary-spanning practices, as well as providing a useful contribution for managers involved in crowdsourcing via platform in culturally different markets.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of this study is methodological in nature, relating to the absence of interviews with board members of Google China who are reluctant to speak about Google activities in China for political raisons. This restriction is partly counterbalanced by the analysis of publicly available secondary data such as news and communications.Practical implicationsThis research has generated practical recommendations for managers of organizations, which require optimal boundary spanning for crowdsourcing. Managers must understand the different sources of social boundaries between their organization and the crowd. The crowd should be segmented into smaller groups with distinctive identities, and organizations should systematically design boundary-spanning activities to address each boundary of each segment. The boundary-spanning activities involve a specific set of tools, programs and platforms to address the target group. Efficient boundary spanning depends on the necessity to select boundary spanners with high cultural intelligence and communication skills.Social implicationsThis paper draws on Bourdieu's theory of practice to investigate the role of boundary spanning in crowdsourcing for innovation, specifically in the joint field between Google and Chinese developers. This research reveals how boundary objects such as developer documents, websites, programs and events are essential for developers to be able to participate on Google's platform. Companies should be prepared to invest in the design and delivery of boundary-spanning activities and objects, knowing that these are also a locus for negotiation with local partners.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the literature by applying the boundary-spanner theory to Google crowdsourcing practices within a restricted market. Bourdieu's theory of practice has proven to be a potent perspective with which to better understand the positive role of boundary spanners in the joint field between Google and Chinese developers. Moreover, this practice perspective has not been used in prior research to highlight power relations in crowdsourcing for innovation. This study has shown that, in addition to boundary objects, boundary spanners can also contribute in the transfer of intellectual capital, which is the pivotal resource for boundary spanning in this field.

Ancillary Cost Implications of Multisiting and Organizational Boundary Spanning during Healthcare

This study investigates the management of diagnostic testing and pharmacy expenditures in U.S. acute-care hospitals. These so-called ancillary costs are charges associated with services provided to support patient treatment, including laboratory, radiology, and pharmacy charges. Previous studies suggest that investing in structural and technological boundary-spanning practices may help reduce the increasing ancillary costs. In this research, we examine the role of individual boundary spanners, namely multisiting physicians who practice at more than one hospital, in reducing ancillary cost. We also look at how organizational boundary spanning abilities measured by the hospital’s affiliation in an accountable care organization (ACO) model affect this relationship. To do this, we assembled a unique data set of 163,617 patients treated by 4,411 physicians at 182 hospitals in Florida from 2014 to 2016. Using an econometric estimation approach accounting for endogeneity, we find that patients treated by multisiting physicians experienced per-hospitalization reductions in laboratory and radiology charges of 49.16% and 32.04%, respectively. These savings increase, moreover, when multisiting physicians have less practice experience. We also find that hospitals participating in ACO model complements the savings achieved through multisiting physicians in the form of even lower pharmacy costs. In our post-hoc analysis, we find the cost reduction that multisiting physicians achieve come through reducing the total number of procedures or tests ordered. We also find that lower treatment charges do not compromise the clinical quality of patients treated by multisiting physicians. Collectively, the findings offer important insights to the healthcare operations management literature on the interaction between individual-organizational boundary-spanning efforts and patient-level outcomes.

Coping with interdependencies related to patient choice: Boundary-spanning at four accountable care organizations.

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are responsible for outcomes that are only partially under their control because patients may choose to self-refer outside the ACO, overuse resource-intensive services, or underuse evidence-based care. ACOs must devise boundary-spanning practices to manage these interdependencies related to patient choice. The aim of this study was to identify, conceptualize, and categorize ACO efforts to cope with interdependencies related to patient choice. We conducted qualitative organizational case studies of four ACOs. We interviewed 89 executives, mid-level managers, and physicians and analyzed the data through multiple rounds of inductive coding. We identified 15 boundary-spanning practices, in which two or more ACOs engaged in efforts to understand, cope with, or alter interdependencies related to patient choice. Analysis of these practices revealed five categories of factors that appeared to shape patient choices in ways that may impact ACO performance: the availability of services, interactions with patients, system complexities, care provided to ACO patients by non-ACO providers, and uncertainties related to the environment. Our findings provide a process theory of ACO boundary-spanning: Each individual boundary-spanning practice contributes to a broader strategic goal, through which it may impact a particular aspect of interdependence and thereby reduce underuse, overuse, or leakage (i.e., provision of services outside the ACO). In identifying ACO boundary-spanning practices and proposing how they may impact interdependence, our theory highlights conceptual relationships that researchers can study and test. Similarly, in identifying key aspects of interdependencies related to patient choice and a broad assortment of ACO boundary-spanning practices, our findings provide managers with a tool for evaluating and developing their own boundary-spanning efforts.

Crossing times: Temporal boundary-spanning practices in interorganizational projects

This paper introduces the notion of “temporal boundary spanning” and highlights the key role of project management in resolving temporal tensions among partners participating in interorganizational projects (IOPs). The present study, which is based on data from 93 IOPs undertaken within a major change program, relies on in-depth, semi-structured interviews, observations, and detailed analyses of written documents and procedures from those IOPs. Based on the data, we inductively develop a practice-based theory that identifies three main practices (framing, synchronizing, hyping) used to resolve the central temporal tensions observed in the studied IOPs. In that respect, the paper offers novel insights into the role and practice of project management in IOPs.

How to Engage the Crowd for Innovation in Restricted Markets? The Case of Google in China.

Technological firms growingly depend on open innovation to compete in hypercompetitive markets. To openly engage the creativity of a multitude of private actors, firms can rely on crowdsourcing. This is notably the case of mobile application platform providers, such as Google, Apple, Huawei, etc. When practiced at a global scale, the crowdsourcing give rise to challenges for companies to continuously engage multiple local partners, communicate successfully despite cultural difference and create a sense of community. In this essay, we argue that crowdsourcing for innovation at a global scale requires effective boundary spanning capabilities. These boundary-spanning practices allow firms to ensure a smooth cooperation with the crowd and solve problems related with status difference and organizational context differentials. This paper draws on a qualitative study of Google in China and focuses on the boundary spanning activities which are responsible for the development of sustainable and efficient relationships with a growing community of Chinese developers. This study context has been chosen because Google officially left China in 2010 leaving its search engine and other services unavailable within the Chinese Great Firewall. How Google can attract Chinese developers to contribute to its product platform despite market restrictions is a key issue. This research study provides a deep and conceptualized description of the boundary-spanning practices and contribution for managers.

Spanning the multilevel boundaries of construction organisations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the interdependent boundary-spanning activities that characterise the level of permeability of knowledge, information flow and learning among construction supply chains involved in the delivery of building information modelling (BIM)-compliant construction projects. Construction projects are mobilised through a number of interdependent processes and multi-functional activities by different practitioners with myriad specialised skills. Many of the difficulties that manifest in construction projects can be attributed to the fragmented work activities and inter-disciplinary nature of project teams. This is nevertheless becoming ever more pertinent with the rise of technology deployment in construction organisations.Design/methodology/approachThe study combined experts’ sampling interviews and a case study research method to help offer better insights into the kind of emerging multilevel boundary practices as influenced by the rapidly evolving construction technological solutions. The experts’ sampling helped inform better understanding by unravelling the key changes in contemporary boundary configurations and related boundary-spanning practices within technology-mediated construction project settings. The case study also helped to establish the manifestation of best practices for managing multilevel boundaries in BIM-enabled construction project organisations.FindingsThe study has revealed that different generic organisational BIM strategies as developed in specialised boundaries are reconfigured as appropriate at the project level to produce project-specific BIM execution plan (BXP). The outcome of project BXP is dependent on the project organisational teams that cooperate in creating new solutions and on conceding space for negotiations and compromises which conflicting interests at the project level can find to be both desirable and feasible. The implementation effort is therefore contingent on mutual translation in which different actors with different insights instigate their practice through negotiation and persuasion which eventually are reinforced by contractual agreements and obligations.Originality/valueThe paper has presented a novel and well-timed empirical insight into BIM-enabled project delivery and best practices that span multilevel boundaries of construction organisations.

The diffusion of civic technology and open government in the United States

Civic technology is a nascent force in the relationship between governments and communities. Elements of the civic technology ecosystem include open data, related information and communications technology (ICT) innovations and the organizational boundary-spanning practices of civic technology. This paper reports the results of an exploratory study of civic technology adoption by local governments in the United States. The research compares the 113 U.S. city governments recognized for their exemplary fiscal year 2012 popular annual financial reports (PAFRs) with the 49 municipalities in the U.S. state of Delaware that operate websites. Results suggest that a long term commitment to citizen involvement in government data and the size of the community are important predictors of adoption.

Boundary-spanning: reflections on the practices and principles of Global Health

As Global Health evolves, not merely as a metaphor for international collaboration, but as a distinct field of practice, it warrants greater consideration of how it is practiced, by whom,...

Exploring boundary-spanning practices among creativity managers

Purpose – External inputs are critical for organisational creativity. In order to bridge different thought worlds and cross-organisational barriers, managers must initiate and motivate boundary spanning processes. The purpose of this paper is to explore how boundary spanners manage creativity projects across organisational boundaries. Design/methodology/approach – The authors link to previous literature and present findings from a comparative case study of managerial practices for managing creativity projects. Data were collected through interviews, secondary materials, site visits and observation. Findings – Three meta-practices used by managers to manage boundary-spanning creative projects are presented: defining the creative space, making space for creativity and acting in the creative space. These practices are detailed in seven case studies of creative projects. Research limitations/implications – The analysis focuses on boundary spanning as a management process rather than a capability for organisat...