Cross-boundary Teams Research Articles

"How fancy you are to make us use your fancy tool": Coordinating Individuals' Tool Preference over Group Boundaries

When a group makes a decision, it necessitates the understanding and amalgamation of information from different group members. This process becomes particularly intricate in cross-boundary teams, which consist of individuals from diverse organizational backgrounds, each bringing in unique informational tools and representation modalities. People share information generated from their personal tools, and the variance in representation of such information makes it challenging to form cohesive group decisions. We conducted workshop studies with 11 knowledge workers to understand current practices of tool adaptation and negotiation in such teams. The results indicate a reluctance to adopt new tools due to perceived violations of social acceptance, often leading to negative judgments of those suggesting new tools. Consequently, participants in cross-boundary teams gravitated towards their preferred tools, complicating the aggregation of inputs and impeding cohesive decision-making. To address these challenges, we developed a platform facilitating sensemaking and decision-making without necessitating compromises on tool preferences. In our mixed-method within-subject experiments, this approach enabled faster, more informed decision-making with reduced mental load and increased engagement through enhanced social interaction and acknowledgment of diverse contributions.

Entry Points: Gaining Momentum in Early-Stage Cross-Boundary Collaborations

To address complex social challenges, it is widely recognized that leaders from public, for-profit, and civic organizations should join forces. Yet, well-intended collaborators often struggle to achieve alignment and fail to gain traction in their joint efforts. This article proposes the concept of “entry points” as a key milestone in a collaboration's early stages. Using a unique set of rich, longitudinal data, we examine how ten cross-boundary teams with representation from ten city governments in North America and Europe searched for these entry points (i.e., opportunities for focused action to advance learning and progress towards their collective goals). Based on systematic coding, we propose factors that impeded or enabled the teams' abilities to find entry points in their collaborative work. The paper contributes to literatures on cross-boundary collaboration, problem-oriented governance, and paradoxes in organizational behavior, and it offers an analytic framework to help cross-boundary collaboration practitioners identify their entry points.

Generating genuine inclusion in higher education utilising an original, transferable, and customisable model for teaching and assessing reflective learning

ABSTRACT The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights calls for accessible higher education (HE), stating that it is necessary for the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity. Education is therefore at the heart of global development goals transforming internationalisation into a core strategic pillar for universities. Amidst pressure on academics to prepare students for real world employment including working in cross-boundary teams, global research trends indicate an indifference to diversity. For post Global Financial Crisis (1987) and Coronavirus Disease (2019) domestic graduates seeking employment in contracting economic markets, indifference intensified to hostility. Addressing these issues using an original customisable model for teaching and assessing reflective learning across HE, a three-stage targeted intervention was prepared and actioned (2008–2020). With research suggesting that high level and complex learning is best developed when assessment, involves students as partners, the intervention included an iterative process of peer review. With 6000 participating Business students, the feedback indicates that scaffolded reflective processes have a powerful effect on students’ understanding of assessment tasks and their willingness to work in diverse teams with significant benefits for student outcomes and staff development.

Joint Problem-Solving Orientation in Fluid Cross-Boundary Teams

Using interviews, a national field survey, and an online laboratory study, we have examined teamwork in fluid cross-boundary teams. Across three studies, we qualitatively discovered and quantitativ...

Optimizing Teamwork for Human Performance Teams: Strategies for Enhancing Team Effectiveness.

Human performance teams (HPTs) are highly capable and complex teams comprised of medical and performance professionals dedicated to supporting health and sustaining mission capabilities of the Special Operations Forces (SOF) warfighter community. As resources continue to be devoted to recruiting, hiring, and organizing HPTs, there is an increased need to support team-based capabilities, or their ability to work collaboratively and cooperatively across boundaries. In this article, we draw on existing evidence-based approaches to supporting team-based competencies to present a set of strategies designed to address barriers to cross-boundary teaming, catalyze innovation and precision of human performance optimization (HPO) service delivery, and maximize the impact of HPTs on warfighter medical and mission readiness. We begin by offering a conceptual paradigm shift that broadens the lens through which HPO intervention opportunities exist. We then explore how to promote a common understanding of the needs, performance demands, and occupational risks, which should clarify shared goals and targets for service delivery. We also discuss a refined strategy for hiring and recruiting members of HPTs, and finally, we propose opportunities for cultivating communication and collaboration across and within the HPO spectrum. By elevating HPT-based capabilities, the SOF community should be able to amplify the investment made in these invaluable resources.

Cross-Boundary Collaboration and Problem-Solving to Promote 21st Century Skills—Students’ Experiences

This study is part of an ongoing design-based research initiative, during which a new course on forest bioeconomics was designed and implemented in higher education context. The pedagogy of the new course was informed by the framework of 21st century skills, ideas of collaborative problem-solving and knowledge building, cross-boundary teaming, and online and blended learning. During the implementation of the pilot course, in-depth group interview data were collected and WhatsApp discussion threads were used as supplementary data. Participants included students (n=18) from Finnish universities and universities of applied sciences who enrolled in and completed the course. The data were analyzed qualitatively with the aim of finding out how 21st century skills were manifested in students’ experiences of collaborative problem-solving in cross-boundary teams in blended or online learning settings. It was also considered, if there were differences in the experiences of students from blended and online course options. The results of the qualitative analysis provide multiple implications for course development in upcoming design-based research cycles. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.13.3

Joint Problem-solving: Overcoming Membership Instability in Cross-boundary Teams

Understanding how teams perform fast-paced, cross-boundary work is critical for organizations operating in dynamic environments. In these contexts, teams often form quickly, change often and cross organization, profession or sector boundaries, thus bearing little resemblance to the stable, bounded teams studied in most organizational research. In two studies, we explore how cross- boundary teams can work together effectively when team member instability limits opportunities to establish consistent structures, enhance team member familiarity and bridge knowledge differences. First, we conduct an inductive comparative case study of fourteen teams composed of medical care providers and community-based organization staff who came together to establish novel referral systems for chronic disease management services. We find that a team orientation focused on joint problem-solving helped teams make progress, despite membership instability. By contrast, a team orientation focused on establishing trusting relation...

Cross-Boundary Teaming For Innovation: Integrating Research on Teams and Knowledge in Organization

Cross-Boundary Teaming For Innovation: Integrating Research on Teams and Knowledge in Organization

Meeting at the Interface of Research on Teams and Boundaries to Explore Cross-Boundary Teaming

As business ecosystems evolve in ways that force organizations to become more fluid and flexible, and as the workforce become both more diverse and global and less stable and more specialized, team...

Cross-boundary teaming for innovation: Integrating research on teams and knowledge in organizations

Cross-boundary teaming, within and across organizations, is an increasingly popular strategy for innovation. Knowledge diversity is seen to expand the range of views and ideas that teams can draw upon to innovate. Yet, case studies reveal that teaming across knowledge boundaries can be difficult in practice, and innovation is not always realized. Two streams of research are particularly relevant for understanding the challenges inherent in cross-boundary teaming: research on team effectiveness and research on knowledge in organizations. They offer complementary insights: the former stream focuses on group dynamics and measures team inputs, processes, emergent states, and outcomes, while the latter closely investigates dialog and objects in recurrent social practices. Drawing from both streams, this paper seeks to shed light on the complexity of cross-boundary teaming, while highlighting factors that may enhance its effectiveness. We develop an integrative model to provide greater explanatory power than previous approaches to assess cross-boundary teaming efforts and their innovation performance.

Griping and Joking as Identification Rituals and Tools for Engagement in Cross-Boundary Team Meetings

This article explores the role of griping and joking behaviors in cross-boundary teams. Those socio-emotional behaviors often go unnoticed in studies of team communication, as does more broadly the work of building relationships. Given the growing recognition that the quality of connections among team members significantly influences the quality of coordinating and knowledge-sharing practices in cross-boundary teams, this seems an important lacuna to address. Drawing on a qualitative study of a cross-occupational team responsible for palliative care and oncology patients, I illustrate how those mundane, recurrent communicative activities, which may appear tangential to the task at hand, have important relational and emotional consequences for the functioning of cross-boundary teams. Based on the observed characteristics and effects of a variety of griping and joking behaviors, I propose to conceptualize those communicative activities as identification rituals. I discuss the implications of this work for both research on the production of positive relational realities in cross-boundary teams and the study of organizational griping and humor.

Cross-Boundary Teaming for Innovation: Integrating Research on Teams and Knowledge in Organizations

Teaming across expertise boundaries, within and across organizations, is an increasingly popular strategy for innovation. Although membership diversity expands the range of perspectives that teams can draw upon to innovate, meta-analyses of the team-diversity literature have found weak or inconsistent support for that assumption. These studies also have typically examined effects of team diversity in relatively stable bounded teams, rather than in newly formed temporary groups. Drawing from two streams of research to unpack team diversity, this paper seeks to describe the complexity of cross-boundary teaming, while highlighting factors that may be central to its effectiveness. Past research on team diversity suggests numerous moderators that affect the diversity–performance relationship in teams, while research on knowledge and practice explores the situated activities and logics of diverse experts in great depth. Both streams thus shed light on team diversity, offering complementary insights. We develop a model of cross-boundary teaming that marries these streams and offers human resource management researchers and professionals insights and approaches for helping diverse teams tackle complex problems.

Institutional boundaries and trust of virtual teams in collaborative design: An experimental study in a virtual world environment

Members of virtual teams often collaborate within and across institutional boundaries. This research investigates the effects of boundary spanning conditions on the development of team trust and team satisfaction. Two hundred and eighty-two participants carried out a collaborative design task over several weeks in a virtual world, Second Life. Multigroup structural equation modeling was used to examine our research model, which compares individual level measurement between two boundary spanning team conditions. The results indicate that trusting beliefs have a positive impact on team trust, which in turn, influences team satisfaction. Further, we found that, compared to cross-boundary teams, within-boundary teams exhibited not only higher trusting beliefs and higher satisfaction with the collaboration process but also a stronger relationship between team trust and team satisfaction. These results suggest that trust and group theories need to be interpreted in light of institutional affiliation and contextual variables. An important practical implication is that trust can be fostered in a virtual world environment and collaboration on complex tasks can be carried out effectively in virtual worlds. However, within-boundary virtual teams are preferred over cross-boundary virtual teams if satisfaction with the collaboration process is of the highest priority.