Intra-organizational Boundaries Research Articles

Balancing the Boundary: Sustaining Self-Managing Modes of Work Within Hierarchical Organizations

This paper addresses the question of how self-managing teams can sustain their alternative mode of organizing within a more hierarchical organizational setting. We look at this issue as a phenomenon of intra-organizational boundary work. By drawing on communicative under-standing of boundary work, we specifically examine the communicative practices used to negotiate intra-organizational boundaries. Based on a qualitative case study of a self-managing team within the more hierarchical environment of an international medical technology company, we show how the team uses communicative practices of nurturing, exposing and blending-in their self-managing mode of organizing to negotiate their internal boundaries. Through this communicative boundary negotiation and balancing, the team was able to maintain its mode of organizing in an otherwise largely traditionally organized firm.

Transformational Ability of Energy Network Companies: The Role of Institutional Logics and Boundary Spanners

Energy network companies play a vital role in energy transitions. The transformational ability of these companies influences the process of energy transitions and the effectiveness of policies in this domain. This study shows the need for managers of network companies as well as scholars and policy makers operating in the midst of energy transitions to acknowledge the importance and value of boundary spanners in improving the transformation ability of these companies to play their role in facilitating energy transitions. Evidence comes from an in-depth analysis of an energy network company in the Netherlands. Our findings show that the transformation ability of energy network companies depends on various instances of boundary spanning as these organizations address differing or conflicting intra- and inter-organizational institutional logics when contributing to an energy transition. In the context of energy transitions, inter-organizational boundary spanning generally demands more resources and attention than the spanning of intra-organizational boundaries. Additionally, intra-organizational boundaries affect inter-organizational relationships, particularly in the policy arena. Our findings indicate that to carry out the type of institutional change that an energy transition requires, more attention and resources should be dedicated to intra-organizational boundary spanning, even as the need to connect external stakeholders increases.

Managing the Hidden Costs of Coordination

Some initial considerations to control cognitive costs for incident responders include: (1) assessing coordination strategies relative to the cognitive demands of the incident; (2) recognizing when adaptations represent a tension between multiple competing demands (coordination and cognitive work) and seeking to understand them better rather than unilaterally eliminating them; (3) widening the lens to study the joint cognition system (integration of human-machine capabilities) as the unit of analysis; and (4) viewing joint activity as an opportunity for enabling reciprocity across inter- and intra-organizational boundaries.

Globally networked: Intraorganizational boundary spanning in the global organization

Multinational corporations (MNCs) need to sense, source, and mobilize knowledge when and where it arises, whether at home, or elsewhere in the world. For this reason, MNCs benefit from employee networks of relationships that span across intraorganizational barriers, allowing for the efficient mobilization of knowledge across boundaries. Yet, which organizational members are more likely to be able to develop these boundary spanning networks? We leverage a unique data set from a large multinational corporation to empirically test a comprehensive model that captures the effect of an employee’s mandate, expertise, and behavioral orientations on her likelihood to span intraorganizational boundaries that manifest themselves in the form of hierarchies, intra-functional domains, and geographic territories. We find that the employees that are more likely to be boundary spanners are those having mandates with a global impact, high levels of expertise, and a collaborative orientation in their networking behaviors. In addition, we find that these effects are stronger for those employees that have large formal workflow networks.

Collaborative Ties Within: Public Organizations and the Latent Capacity for Advice Network Formation

Many organizations have benefited greatly from an informal structuring process, whereby individuals voluntarily cross intraorganizational boundaries to seek or share advice. Often referred to as advice networks, these collaborative ties can serve as a powerful social conduit for the circulation of information and knowledge. Yet, the extent to which public organizations might benefit from the emergence of advice networks may vary significantly. To help explain some of this variability and offer some guidance as to how public managers can assess the latent capacity of their organizations for advice network formation, this article reports on a study that looks for the precursors or earliest possible indicator of such capacity. Although in need of further investigation, the findings suggest that determining the mix of cultural personalities within an organization should be the starting point, or at least a prominent component, in any effort to assess that capacity. Implications of cultural personalities for organizations, human resources, and the individual are discussed with reference to future study and impact on organizational studies of collaborative ties and advice networks.

Inner Source in Platform-Based Product Engineering

Inner source is an approach to collaboration across intra-organizational boundaries for the creation of shared reusable assets. Prior project reports on inner source suggest improved code reuse and better knowledge sharing. Using a multiple-case case study research approach, we analyze the problems that three major software development organizations were facing in their product line engineering efforts. We find that a root cause, the separation of product units as profit centers from a platform organization as a cost center, leads to delayed deliveries, increased defect rates, and redundant software components. All three organizations assume that inner source can help solve these problems. The article analyzes the expectations that these companies were having towards inner source and the problems they were experiencing in its adoption. Finally, the article presents our conclusions on how these organizations should adapt their existing engineering efforts.

Ethnic diversity and social capital in upward mobility systems

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the complex relationship between ethnic diversity, social capital, and objective career success in upward mobility systems over time. The authors conceptualize the underlying process of why intra-organizational career boundaries are more permeable for dominant ethnics compared to minority ethnics.Design/methodology/approach– The authors conceptually explore and model this relationship by elaborating on three mechanisms of social capital return deficit proposed by Lin (2000), building the argument based on four underlying principles (stereotype fit, status construction, homophily, and reciprocity).Findings– Based on a proposed reciprocal relationship between social capital and objective career success, the authors suggest the development of an upward career spiral over time, which is continuously affected by ethnic group membership. Consequently, the authors argue that dominant ethnics do not only advance to a higher level of objective career success, but that they also advance exponentially faster than minority ethnics.Research limitations/implications– The conceptualization provokes the question to what extent the permeability of intra-organizational boundaries constrains careers of some, while enabling careers of others.Originality/value– The contribution lies in the exploration of the relationship between social capital and objective career success over time, of the permeability of intra-organizational career boundaries, and how both are affected by ethnic group membership.

Knowledge Sharing in Organizations

We examine the conditions under which knowledge embedded in advice relations is likely to reach across intraorganizational boundaries and be shared between distant organizational members. We emphasize boundary-crossing relations because activities of knowledge transfer and sharing across subunit boundaries are systematically related to desirable organizational outcomes. Our main objective is to understand how organizational and social processes interact to sustain the transfer of knowledge carried by advice relations. Using original fieldwork and data that we have collected on members of the top management team in a multiunit industrial group, we show that knowledge embedded in task advice relations is unlikely to crosscut intraorganizational boundaries, unless advice relations are reciprocated, and supported by the presence of hierarchical relations linking managers in different subunits. The results we report are based on a novel Bayesian Exponential Random Graph Models (BERGMs) framework that allows us to test and assess the empirical value of our hypotheses while at the same time accounting for structural characteristics of the intraorganizational network of advice relations. We rely on computational and simulation methods to establish the consistency of the network implied by the model we propose with the structure of the intraorganizational network that we actually observed.

Global Strategy: Boundary Spanning in Global Organizations

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.

Sharing Research Equipment to Bridge Intraorganizational Boundaries

OVERVIEW:R&D units are often structured by product or by scientific discipline. In either case, organizational boundaries impede horizontal information linkages. This dilemma can be mitigated by setting up specific shared equipment arrangements as cross-boundary units. In this article, we present three case studies of shared equipment arrangements that differ largely in terms of their level of institutionalization. However, all three arrangements significantly strengthen informal cross-boundary networks by facilitating face-to-face contact. Shared equipment arrangements may be implemented in a variety of forms, and they are a valuable tool for R&D managers to improve organizational knowledge management.

Supply chain architectures in an e-environment

The concept of supply chain management (SCM) has occupied serious research attention in recent years. This concept goes beyond intra-organizational boundaries to achieve a greater value of the entire supply chain network. The development of ICT, together with the Internet environment, has an impact on the management concept of traditional supply chains, allowing the integration of participants and the management of complex interfaces between organizations in the supply chain network. The e-business model connects the separate activities of the supply chain in an integrated, coordinated, flexible, efficient and responsive system. This paper analyzes the key aspects of e-SCM and different supply chains architectures in an e-environment as the starting point for defining the generic architecture model of e-SCM.

Strategy tools as boundary objects

The strategy literature has generated an array of strategy ‘tools’, such as core competences and scenario planning. While these are used extensively in strategy teaching and in strategic planning processes, we have few insights on how they are used in practice or of their consequences. Our thinking on tools is shaped by the growing strategy-as-practice perspective, which views strategy as a type of work that people do, not just a property of organizations (Whittington, 2003). Thus, we shift our attention to what actually happens when individuals use a strategy tool, rather than simply assuming their usage. So far, current research has only focused on the intended ‘textbook’ purposes of strategy tools. We argue that we need to know much more about how these tools are used and for what purposes. Focusing upon actual use will offer insights into users’ intentions and the implications of using tools for specific interactions. In particular, different users may employ the same tool not only in different ways but for different reasons. Practitioners may thus be less concerned about the ‘proper’ or ‘improper’ use of a strategy tool than with applying it in particular situations that appear to be appropriate. However, strategy tool use may also lead to unintended consequences. While the language implicit in a particular tool shapes its results, such as a report, the report’s content may not be understood by individuals who are unfamiliar with that specific language. Hence, the use of strategy tools may constrain effective communication across organizational boundaries. There is a literature on boundary objects, which examines how tools and artefacts span work boundaries within organizations (e.g. Bechky, 2003a, 2003b; Carlile, 2002, 2004; Henderson, 1991; Star and Greisemer, 1989), that has not been incorporated into the strategy literature. We aim to build from this literature in order to better understand how strategy tools enable or con strain interaction across intra-organizational boundaries. The boundary objects literature is relevant to strategic organization because it helps us to STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION Vol 7(2): 223–232 DOI: 10.1177/1476127009102674 Copyright ©2009 Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC) http://so.sagepub.com

Transformational change in health care systems

The Institute of Medicine's 2001 report Crossing the Quality Chasm argued for fundamental redesign of the U.S. health care system. Six years later, many health care organizations have embraced the report's goals, but few have succeeded in making the substantial transformations needed to achieve those aims. This article offers a model for moving organizations from short-term, isolated performance improvements to sustained, reliable, organization-wide, and evidence-based improvements in patient care. Longitudinal comparative case studies were conducted in 12 health care systems using a mixed-methods evaluation design based on semistructured interviews and document review. Participating health care systems included seven systems funded through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pursuing Perfection Program and five systems with long-standing commitments to improvement and high-quality care. Five interactive elements appear critical to successful transformation of patient care: (1) Impetus to transform; (2) Leadership commitment to quality; (3) Improvement initiatives that actively engage staff in meaningful problem solving; (4) Alignment to achieve consistency of organization goals with resource allocation and actions at all levels of the organization; and (5) Integration to bridge traditional intra-organizational boundaries among individual components. These elements drive change by affecting the components of the complex health care organization in which they operate: (1) Mission, vision, and strategies that set its direction and priorities; (2) Culture that reflects its informal values and norms; (3) Operational functions and processes that embody the work done in patient care; and (4) Infrastructure such as information technology and human resources that support the delivery of patient care. Transformation occurs over time with iterative changes being sustained and spread across the organization. The conceptual model holds promise for guiding health care organizations in their efforts to pursue the Institute of Medicine aims of fundamental system redesign to achieve dramatically improved patient care.

Challenges to knowledge sharing across national and intra-organizational boundaries: case studies of IKEA and SCA Packaging

The aim of this article is to increase the understanding of how institutional forces and organizational context, in parallel with cognitive issues, impact knowledge sharing within multinational corporations (MNCs). Furthermore, the aim is to elaborate on differences between industries by comparing and contrasting a retail firm with a manufacturing firm. The focus is on IKEA and SCA Packaging and their efforts to share knowledge across national and intra-organizational boundaries. Despite differences between these two MNCs, the case studies illustrate that the will to share and absorb knowledge is very much influenced by institutional forces, as well as by the ways in which organizations are structured and controlled.

Nurses’, midwives’ and health visitors’ involvement in cross‐boundary working within child health services

Cross-boundary working is a key policy objective. Cross-boundary working provides the foundation for high quality provision across child health services and is imperative for an effective child protection system and the support of children and young people with health needs. Two participative conferences were attended by 113 stakeholders utilizing the World Café focus group method. Most (87%) of the sample were nurses, midwives or health visitors. Many examples of cross-boundary working were identified across the different areas of practice. Remarkably few transdisciplinary examples were identified in contrast to the number of inter-agency examples. Intra-organizational boundaries across the health service were also noted. Considerable cross-boundary working was reported but transdisciplinary working is not yet well established across all areas of child health provision.