Organizational Boundaries Research Articles

The framing of contemporary violence policy in England and Wales: An examination of the contributing roles of alcohol and illegal drugs.

Background: In 2018, the UK Government published its Serious Violence Strategy setting out the Government's commitment to adopting a public health approach to 'serious violence' in England and Wales and encouraging a multi-agency, whole system public health approach to violence prevention. There has been very little research attention and commentary on the roles of alcohol and illegal drugs in the construction of "serious violence" within the Strategy. Method: Drawing on thematic analysis of key policy documents, the ways in which drugs and alcohol have been conceptualised in recent violence policy in the English and Welsh context are explored through the analytical framework of "framing". Results: The overwhelming emphasis on violence associated with the drugs market has skewed attention towards exceptional and sensationalist forms of "serious" violence and diverted it from more common and widespread forms of "everyday" violence, including domestic and alcohol-related violence. Omitting these from the policy purview has implications for those affected and how resources are allocated. Conclusion: To advance inclusive and holistic violence prevention, a wider framing of violence is required and both illegal drugs and alcohol need to be embedded for meaningful working across populations and organisational boundaries.

Expanding service beyond the organizational boundaries: moderated mediated model of servant leadership to affect employees’ community citizenship behavior

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to understand how servant leadership affects employees’ community citizenship behavior by transforming their servant identity. Additionally, the study explicated whether the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ servant identity is contingent on leader–follower value congruence.Design/methodology/approachFor this study data was collected from 468 employees working in the service industry in three waves which were undertaken with a lag of one month. The collected data was analyzed through structural equation modeling.FindingsThe results revealed that servant leadership is related to employees’ servant identity. The findings also substantiated the relationship between employees’ servant identity and their community citizenship behavior. The mediating role of servant identity linking servant leadership to employees’ community citizenship behavior was confirmed. Finally, leader–follower value congruence was found to moderate the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ servant identity.Originality/valueThe study is the first to ascertain the mediating role of servant identity linking servant leadership to employees’ community citizenship behavior. It is also the first study to ascertain that the effect of servant leadership on employees’ servant identity is contingent upon leader–follower value congruence.

Cross-Organisational Collaboration Management of Digital Innovation in the Public Sector - The Case of the Estonian Employment Register

Abstract Cross-organisational collaboration management has been an important topic in academic literature, representing the nexus of modern governance arrangements. Organisational boundaries are becoming increasingly blurry with continuous digitalisation through new interaction patterns, resulting in the proliferation of cross- organisational collaborations across sectors and within the public sector. This study contributes to the existing literature by analysing cross-organisational collaboration management within the public sector through the case of the Estonian Employment Register. The author conducted semi-structured interviews with engaged stakeholders and coded the data with a concept-driven and data-driven coding scheme for the analysis. The interviews were analysed for occurrences and co-occurrences. The case highlights the role of system context (pre-established connections, decentralisation, digital infrastructure), process challenges (differences in perspectives, organisation-centric approach, power imbalances) and management interventions (contingent leadership, shifting roles, trilateral connections) for cross-organisational collaborations. The findings demonstrate the importance of pre-existing informal connections in shaping the available alternatives for instruments. Digitally capable agencies can capitalise on opportunities for digital innovation through their technological capability and reputation. The key challenges remain with expanding the cognitive framework beyond the established interaction arenas to adapt to perspectives beyond the initial networks. The ability to maximise the potential of digital innovation is also contingent on designing compatible human interaction processes to manage machine interactions.

Rethinking organizational culture in intersectoral coordination: the perspective of boundary work

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to rethink the concept of organizational culture as something that emerges bottom-up by using the sociological concepts of boundary object and boundary work as an analytical lens and to show how this approach can help understand and facilitate intersectoral coordination.Design/methodology/approachWe used observations and qualitative interviews to develop “deep” knowledge about processes of intersectoral coordination. The study draws on a conceptual framework of “boundary work” and “boundary objects” to show how a bottom-up perspective on organizational culture can produce better understanding of and pave the way for intersectoral coordination. We use a case of health professionals engaged in two Danish intersectoral programs developing and providing health promotion services for women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).FindingsThe study showed how boundary work revolves around negotiations on how to define, understand and act on the diagnosis of GDM. This diagnosis has the characteristics of a “boundary object”, being more loosely structured in general terms, but strongly structured in local settings. Boundary objects help connect different professionals and facilitate coordination. The analysis showed how the introduction of time and the concept of “lifelong health promotion” helped to transgress existing organizational and professional boundaries.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings contribute to the literature on organizational culture and intersectoral coordination. We highlight the benefits of a practice-oriented, bottom-up perspective for a better understanding of how shared meaning is produced in cross professional coordination and collaboration. While the theoretical implications will be general applicable when studying organizational culture, the implications for practice are sensitive to context and the processes we have described as the outcomes of boundary work are generated from cases that were most likely to provide deep insight into our research topic.Practical implicationsFor practice this can build bridges between organizational and professional boundaries.Originality/valueThe findings contribute to the literature on organizational culture and intersectoral coordination. We highlight the benefits of a practice-oriented, bottom-up perspective for a better understanding of how shared meaning is produced in cross professional coordination. This may build bridges between organizational and professional boundaries in practice settings.

Same difference, different sameness: gender-navigating the denominational maze in a Christian African context

ABSTRACT The large and growing denominational diversity of sub-Saharan Christianity has attracted considerable scholarly attention, but its implications for individual experiences and well-being remain poorly understood. I examine women’s perceptions, assessments, and practices in everyday construction of church idiosyncrasies, clustering, and hierarchies and women’s abilities and propensities to navigate along and across the corresponding organisational boundaries in a predominantly Christian setting in rural Mozambique. The analysis uses a combination of data from a census of religious congregations, a household survey, in-depth interviews, and participant observation conducted over a decade. It demonstrates that women’s church involvement is socially indispensable yet also subjectively non-binding. Accordingly, church boundaries, while clearly delineated and recognised, are also seen as highly permeable. This permeability facilitates the crossing of those boundaries but may also disincentivise such crossing. Although rural women are increasingly capable of navigating through the religious space, they are generally precluded from exiting that space altogether, as secular options for non-family social anchoring remain very limited in this and other similar low-income patriarchal contexts.

Mapping the Contours of Blame: An Account of the Moral Boundaries of Organizations

Mapping the Contours of Blame: An Account of the Moral Boundaries of Organizations

It's a jungle out there: Understanding physician payment and its role in group dynamics

Although collaboration between healthcare professionals is essential for the delivery of effective, efficient, and high-quality care, it remains an ongoing and critical challenge across health systems. As a result, many countries are experimenting with innovative payment and employment models. The literature tends to focus on improving collaboration across organizational and sectoral boundaries, and largely ignores potential barriers to collaborative work between members of the same profession within a single organization. Despite intergroup dynamics and professional boundaries having been shown to restrict patient flow and collaboration between specialties, studies have so far tended to overlook the potential effects of differentiated organizational and payment models on physicians' behaviors and intergroup dynamics. In the present study, we seek to unpack the influence of physicians' payment and employment models on their collaborative behaviors and on intergroup dynamics between specialties, adding to the current scholarship on physician payment and employment by considering how physicians’ view and act in response to different structural arrangements. The findings suggest that adopting hybrid models, in which physicians are employed or paid differently within the same organization or practice, creates a bifurcation of the profession whereby physicians across different models are perceived to behave differently and have conflicting professional values. These models are perceived to inhibit collaboration between physicians and complicate hospital governance, restricting the ability to move towards new models of care delivery. These findings can be used as a basis for future work that aims to unpack the reality of physician payment and offer important insights for policies surrounding physician employment.

A collaborative approach to manage continuous service innovation

In dynamic market environments, companies look beyond organizational boundaries to pursue competitive advantages. When they collaborate, organizations might develop innovative service offerings and stay relevant in the market over time, enabled by advances in technologies. However, the collaborative dynamics underpinning strategies for continuous service innovation remain underexplored, such that extant research predominantly adopts an organization-centric perspective and fails to offer a comprehensive view of collaborative innovation initiatives that integrate consecutive projects across technology life cycles. To bridge these gaps, the current research applies an action research approach to the supply chain of organizations dedicated to complex technology delivery and maintenance in the maritime industry. The findings specify not just collaborative strategies for continuous service innovation but also the influential factors and operational service attributes crucial to their success. Therefore, this study proposes collaborative strategies for continuous service innovation, with the assertion that collaboration opportunities are integral to developing and managing novel services. Furthermore, this article introduces a technology life cycle perspective to the management of continuous innovation systems, which demand a collective approach to accommodate multiple technology frequencies (e.g., upkeep, update, upgrade), particularly in multi-technology contexts.

Dynamic system models and their simulation in the Semantic Web

Modelling and Simulation (M&S) are core tools for designing, analysing and operating today’s industrial systems. They often also represent both a valuable asset and a significant investment. Typically, their use is constrained to a software environment intended to be used by engineers on a single computer. However, the knowledge relevant to a task involving modelling and simulation is in general distributed in nature, even across organizational boundaries, and may be large in volume. Therefore, it is desirable to increase the FAIRness (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse) of M&S capabilities; to enable their use in loosely coupled systems of systems; and to support their composition and execution by intelligent software agents. In this contribution, the suitability of Semantic Web technologies to achieve these goals is investigated and an open-source proof of concept-implementation based on the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) standard is presented. Specifically, models, model instances, and simulation results are exposed through a hypermedia API and an implementation of the Pragmatic Proof Algorithm (PPA) is used to successfully demonstrate the API’s use by a generic software agent. The solution shows an increased degree of FAIRness and fully supports its use in loosely coupled systems. The FAIRness could be further improved by providing more “ rich” (meta)data.

Caught in a standstill—The unresolved challenges of integrated service delivery in public organizations

AbstractDespite widespread support for integrated service delivery (ISD), the challenges of making ISD a sustainable feature of the public sector remain unresolved. This article offers new insights to this persistent challenge by developing a novel theoretical framework, inspired by the perspective of institutional complexity, and applying it to the case of Danish job centers. We demonstrate how the contradictory and layered nature of governance arrangements simultaneously pose demands of service integration and ‐separation on the job centers. Consequently, the job center managers can neither prioritize one of the demands nor blend them into hybrid practices. Instead, their attempts to further ISD remain inherently temporary—as they are continuously forced to reverse back to old organizational boundaries, to oscillate between work processes supporting service integration and service separation, and to rebuild collaborative relations. The managers are thus caught in a “frenetic standstill,” which hinders the sustainable organizing of ISD.

Impact of the Pandemic was Minor Compared to Systemic Decrease in Fidelity of Assertive Community Treatment Services- A Provincial Study in Ontario, Canada.

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model is the gold standard in community psychiatry serving people with severe mental illness. With its outreach-based design, the pandemic has profoundly affected the operations and functioning of ACT. The Dartmouth ACT Scale (DACTS) provides a standardized comprehensive and quantitative way to evaluate ACT quality. Results could inform nature of impact and identify areas for improvement. Current online survey used DACTS during the pandemic in April-May 2021. Clinical and administrative leadership of the 80 ACT teams in Ontario, Canada cross-sectionally rated ACT quality one-year pre-Covid (2018-2019) and one-year post the start of Covid (2020-2021). The overall pre-Covid Ontario ACT DACTS fidelity was 3.65. The pandemic led to decreases in all domains of DACTS (Human Resources: -4.92%, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.08-0.27]; Organizational Boundary: -1.03%, p < 0.013,95%CI [0.01-0.07]; and Nature of Services: -6.18%, p < 0.001, 95%CI [0.16-0.26]). These changes were accounted by expected lower face-to-face encounters, time spent with clients, reduction in psychosocial services, less interactions with hospitals and diminished workforces. The magnitude of change was modest (-3.84%, p < 0.001, 95%CI [0.09-0.19]). However, the Ontario ACT pre-Covid DACTS was substantially lower (-13.5%) when compared to that from a similar survey 15 years ago (4.22), suggestive of insidious systemic level loss of fidelity. Quantitative fidelity evaluation helped to ascertain specific pandemic impact. Changes were significant and specific, but overall relatively modest when compared to the larger system level drop over the last decade. There is both evidence for model adaptability and resilience during Covid disruption, and concerns over larger downward drift in ACT fidelity and quality.

Sustainability Within the HRD Field: A Systematic Review

Promoting sustainability creates environments for thriving while conserving resources for generations to come. Implementing sustainability practices has been increasingly emphasized, as businesses are required to go beyond their organizational boundaries and improve performance. Despite the intense interest in sustainability, its research has rarely been investigated and synthesized within the current knowledge base in the HRD field. Therefore, we aim to systematically analyze recent articles on sustainability and its relevance to HRD. We conducted a systematic review of the literature in this by following the PRISMA guidelines, and this resulted in a set of 59 articles. Our review identified several impending issues of sustainability, such as a lack of definitions, constructs, and empirical investigation of sustainability. Based on the findings, we discussed them from the recent conversations on sustainability and emphasized the role of HRD in how organizations should be based on sustainability and how to promote sustainability through integrated learning. In addition, this review delved into key strategies to foster sustainability initiatives and discussed implications for HRD practice and research.

Evidence in Practice: How Structural and Programmatic Scaffolds Enable Collaboration in International Development

This inductive study of eight international development interventions analyzes mechanisms that enable integration of evidence in practice, a perennial challenge of learning and collaboration across occupational and organizational boundaries. We demonstrate how structural and programmatic scaffolding practices enabled actors from an array of organizations and communities of practice to collaborate and learn despite the uncertainty and complexity inherent in the international development context. These modular scaffolding practices offered temporary stabilization and support that fostered the counter-normative behaviors and mindsets required for continuous learning and adaptive coordination. Through 226 in-depth interviews with international development experts, including practitioners in eight matched interventions in India, Mexico, South Africa, and Ghana, we identified and analyzed mechanisms that explain the varying effectiveness with which evidence was integrated in each case. Our findings have implications for interorganizational innovation and collaboration under conditions of complexity and uncertainty and for dynamic interactions among individuals, their organizations, and their communities of practice when they are attempting to bring about systemic change.

Centering socioecological connections to collaboratively manage post‐fire vegetation shifts

Climate change is altering fire regimes and post‐fire conditions, contributing to relatively rapid transformation of landscapes across the western US. Studies are increasingly documenting post‐fire vegetation transitions, particularly from forest to non‐forest conditions or from sagebrush to invasive annual grasses. The prevalence of climate‐driven, post‐fire vegetation transitions is likely to increase in the future with major impacts on social–ecological systems. However, research and management communities have only recently focused attention on this emerging climate risk, and many knowledge gaps remain. We identify three key needs for advancing the management of post‐fire vegetation transitions, including centering Indigenous communities in collaborative management of fire‐prone ecosystems, developing decision‐relevant science to inform pre‐ and post‐fire management, and supporting adaptive management through improved monitoring and information‐sharing across geographic and organizational boundaries. We highlight promising examples that are helping to transform the perception and management of post‐fire vegetation transitions.

HEALTHCARE MANAGERS' ROLE IN ADDRESSING HEALTH DISPARITIES: A REVIEW OF STRATEGIES

This review paper comprehensively explores the pivotal role of healthcare managers in addressing health disparities. It examines their responsibilities, including strategic planning, cultural competence, and community engagement. The impact of managerial decisions on healthcare delivery and outcomes for diverse populations is scrutinized, highlighting the intricate challenges and systemic barriers. The paper emphasizes the influential intersection of healthcare policies, underscoring the need for policies that prioritize equity. Additionally, it elucidates the crucial role of education and training for healthcare managers, stressing continuous professional development in diverse healthcare settings. The future directions encompass precision approaches, technology integration, and a global perspective on health disparities. The conclusion emphasizes the significance of healthcare managers as transformative leaders in the ongoing pursuit of health equity, orchestrating strategies that transcend organizational boundaries and resonate within communities. This review serves as a roadmap for advancing healthcare management practices that contribute to dismantling disparities and fostering inclusivity in healthcare delivery&#x0D; Keywords: Health Disparities, Healthcare Management, Cultural Competence, Policy Implications, Continuous Professional Development.

A Systematic Literature Review on University Collaboration in Open Innovation: Trends, Technologies, and Frameworks

Open innovation is a concept of collaboration of ideas, knowledge, and resources that originates from within the organization and involves external organizations. University-industry collaboration is a factor driving innovation and competitiveness. Most research on interactions between universities and industry concentrated on the industrial side meanwhile, universities, as knowledge producers, play a vital role in creating an open innovation ecosystem that encourages realizing innovations that benefit society. Therefore, the problem raised in this research is how university collaboration can support open innovation. This research aims to identify research trends, the latest technologies, and inter-university collaboration frameworks that can support open innovation. The methodology used is Kitchenham's Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and bibliometric. SLR consists of Identification Study, Selection Studies, Quality Assessment, Data Extraction and Study Synthesis. From the SLR stages, 21 papers published between 2019 and 2023 were obtained. Synthesis and additional literature review were carried out to identify trends, technologies, and frameworks related to the topic comprehensively. In terms of trend, based on the application bibliometric, it was found that there was an increase in the number of publications and the top list of open innovation journals. University collaboration in open innovation more frequently takes place in the UK, and the industries mostly involved are small-medium enterprises. Quantitative research methodology and data analyses, comprising of hypothesis test, regression test, and descriptive statistics, are mostly preferred. Meanwhile, descriptive data analysis is the most common means of qualitative data analysis. Numerous suggestions on topics for future research were also identified. In addition, data analysis using machine learning survival data is identified as a novelty among data analysis methods. Technology transfer and the use of digital platforms may support open innovation processes, and the use of blockchain technology may promote digital platforms development. Seven domains form the framework for university collaboration in open innovation, namely Social Behavior, People, Process, Organization, Environment, Technology, and Performance. The findings of trends, technologies, and frameworks in this research may serve as a foundation for research on similar topics, and the identified framework domains could serve as framework components that might be used by universities to collaborate with partners in implementing open innovation processes. The research have contributes to knowledge management theoretically and practically. Theoretically, open innovation can expand the knowledge base by supporting the concept that knowledge and expertise can be found outside organizational boundaries. Practically, it can enrich knowledge management practices by emphasizing the importance of utilizing digital platform technology in supporting knowledge management sourced from external knowledge and collaboration services in the open innovation process.

Providing holistic end-of-life care for people with a history of problem substance use: a mixed methods cohort study of interdisciplinary service provision and integrated care

Harmful use of illicit drugs and/or alcohol is linked to life-limiting illness and complex health and social care needs, but people who use substances and have complex needs do not receive timely palliative care and fail to achieve quality standards for a good death. They and their families often require support from multiple health and social care services which are shown to be poorly integrated and fail to deliver interdisciplinary care. This study aimed to identify the existing barriers and facilitators within and between services in providing this population with a good death. Using a mixed methods approach of survey, focus groups and semi-structured interviews, we explored the perspectives of practitioner and management staff across a range of health and social disciplines and organisations in one combined authority in a large city in the north west of England. Our findings indicate that practitioners want to provide better care for this client group, but face structural, organisational and professional boundary barriers to delivering integrated and shared care. Differences in philosophy of care, piecemeal commissioning and funding of services, and regulatory frameworks for different services, lead to poor and inequitable access to health and social care services. Ways forward for improving care are suggested as bespoke hostel-based accommodation for palliative care for this client group, and specialist link workers who can transcend professional and organisational boundaries to support co-ordination of services and support. We conclude that it is no longer adequate to call for more training, better communication and improved joint working. Complex care at the end of life requires creative and cohesive systemic responses that enable multi-disciplinary practitioners to provide the care they wish to give and enables individuals using substances to get the respect and quality service they deserve.

Organizing coopetitive tensions: Collaborative consumption in project ecologies

The discourse of social organizing in projects centres on temporary-permanent relationships across projects and between projects and embedded organizations. Less explored are temporary-temporary relationships within project ecologies. We investigate the practice of collaborative consumption in project ecologies as a form of such relationships. Specifically, we focus on tensions arising from contradictory logics of cooperation and competition in these temporary and ad-hoc strategic interactions. Based on the case of the construction industry, our results elaborate how coopetitive tensions shape the extent and forms of these ad-hoc temporary interactions among stakeholders to guide innovation in project supply chains. Beyond the limitations of broad strategic collaborations, these innovations promote the prospects for joint specializations, collective commitments, strategic resource dependences and more permeable organizational boundaries. But organizing these ad-hoc strategic interactions requires additional regulatory frameworks, as well as alternative artifacts, such as a digital platform for brokering structural holes in information relating supply and demand. Our study extends the stakeholder discourse in project studies through empirical research into emerging forms of temporary ad-hoc stakeholder interactions rather than broad strategic collaborations. Understanding these ad-hoc interactions and associated coopetitive tensions instigates a wider range of social organizing in project ecologies.

Juggling conflicting demands when using a new intervention to combat child physical abuse in the Swedish child welfare services

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the complexities of using a new intervention when parents are suspected of child physical abuse. Children leaving a child forensic interview due to suspected child physical abuse are often handed over to their parents, who sometimes are the suspected perpetrators. The Efter barnförhöret (EB) [After the child forensic interview] intervention was developed to aid children in this stressful situation by providing professional support from child welfare services to the child and parents. The article is based on interviews with 11 respondents working with EB. Narratives reveal how respondents use their discretionary space to navigate different institutional logics. In the themes Focusing on the child, Getting parents motivated, The challenges with organizational boundaries and Demand trumps resources, respondents argue that EB, despite organizational challenges, is considered an important intervention that meets the needs of children and families after the disclosure of child physical abuse.

Assessing the Influence of Entrepreneurial Culture on Innovative Work Behaviour: An Empirical Study of the Indian Service Sector

This study investigates the relationship between entrepreneurial culture and innovative work behaviour of the employees in Indian service sector organisations. Based on responses collected from 203 Indian service sector employees, the study examines the impact of the factors constituting entrepreneurial culture, namely, management support, work discretion/ autonomy, rewards, time availability and organisational boundaries on their innovative work behaviour. Multiple regression analysis has been used to study this relationship. The results show that work discretion, time availability and reward/reinforcement had a significant positive impact on innovative work behaviour. On the other hand, management support and organisational boundaries did not significantly affect innovative work behaviour. This study assists managers in understanding the factors which are the facilitators and inhibitors of innovative work behaviour among employees.