Organizational Boundaries Research Articles

The application of a person-centred approach to process improvement in ophthalmology services in the North East of the Republic of Ireland

Background: Ophthalmology in the Republic of Ireland has one of the longest waiting lists in healthcare, with around 44,000 people awaiting a first outpatient appointment. In the north-east region, 12,500 people are waiting. The North-Eastern Region Integrated Eye Care Service (NERIECS) was established in 2021 to improve patient care and access to services. A key driver for the team was to understand ‘how we work together’ to enable a shared vision of change within regional services. Aim: To support hospital and community ophthalmology services, which comprise eight organisations in the region, to prepare for the development of system-level integration of eyecare services. Methods: We integrated a popular process-improvement methodology, Lean Six Sigma, with a person-centred approach to support staff to develop a shared vision of change and to deliver improvements for ophthalmology services. Findings: The integrated approach enabled staff to work in ways that supported the development of good quality, person-centred care that takes account of the outcomes for and experiences of ophthalmology patients and their families, and of staff. Conclusions: Our work builds on a recent study that identified coherence in the underlying philosophy, intention, method and outcomes of Lean Six Sigma and person-centred approaches to healthcare improvement, highlighting the added value of an integrated approach in enabling improvement that positively impacts patient outcomes and healthcare culture. Implications for practice: The application of an integrated approach to process improvement in healthcare is shown to be effective beyond a single study site, having a positive impact across geographic and organisational boundaries, and across levels of care (primary, secondary, tertiary and post-acute) The integrated approach puts the focus on synergies between both methodological approaches and avoids improvement work being reduced to the use of a decontextualised toolkit

Organizational structure and Academic staff Performances in Private Universities in Uganda.

The decision to organize and restructure institutions have become crucial due to dynamics of the Academic environment in private Universities. Organizational structure is the most important structural choice a leader must make as it establishes the formal categorization, coordination, and division of work duties in an organization, The authors assert that the organizational structure and level of employees dedication among academic staff members are very crucial. The decision to organize and restructure institutions has become crucial due to the dynamics of the academic environment in private universities. Organizational structure is the most important structural choice a leader must make as it establishes the formal categorization, coordination, and division of work duties in an organization. The authors assert that the organizational structure and level of employee’s dedication among academic staff members are very crucial. The study is aimed at reviewing literature on organizational structure and academic staff performance in private universities in Western Uganda. In order to achieve this, the researcher used ProQuest significantly with the appearance of web-based providers which includes: Science Direct; Web of Science; Em-erald; Google Scholar; Scopus ,Springer; Education Resources Information Centre (ERIC), Tylor and Francis. All the databases were scanned to retrieve the published articles in social science, management education with regard to Organizational structure and academic staff performance in private universities in Uganda. I used a computer laptop and internet gadgets and downloaded 100 articles and some journals related to the research topic under review. Review findings indicate that organizational boundaries and hierarchical layers have a substantial impact on academic staff performance and promote dedication among academic staff members in universities. It was also found that organizational structure and service delivery are positively correlated. On the basis of the literature reviewed, empirical evidence shows that organizational structure has a significant impact on academic staff performance in private universities in Uganda. Keywords: Organizational structure, academic staff performance, private universities

Corporate Entrepreneurship Environment and Younger Workforce Engagement: An Empirical Examination

As organizations strive to engage and retain the younger generations, the increasing growth of the younger workforce as a percentage of the organizational workforce has inadvertently created difficulty in integrating them with the older workforce. With younger employees embracing significantly different values and expectations than the older workforce, organizations are increasingly working to promote corporate entrepreneurship as a potential means of engaging them. Nonetheless, we lack clarity on how the corporate entrepreneurship environment enables organizations to engage the younger workforce is unexplored. Therefore, this study uses the mixed method approach to explore the relationship between the corporate entrepreneurship environment and younger workforce engagement. Adopting a qualitative research design, we conducted semi-structured interviews with six chief people officers and four middle-level human resource managers from six different organizations in India. The findings revealed key themes, including (a) top management support, (b) work discretion, (c) rewards and younger workforce engagement, (d) time availability, and (e) organizational boundaries. We followed up with the survey research conducted on 120 younger employees to examine the hypothesized relationship. The findings indicate a direct relationship between corporate entrepreneurship environment dimensions and young workforce engagement. The study adds to the literature on younger employee engagement by explaining the critical role of corporate entrepreneurship environment dimensions as a driver of younger workforce engagement. An improved understanding of the expectations of the younger workforce will assist organizations in designing work and creating organizational environments that are more likely to engage the younger workforce.

Drawing a line: boundary work in victim support police work

ABSTRACT Victim support entails one of the most intense stress- and trauma-laden interactions faced by law enforcement professionals, and this function or role frequently triggers long-lasting negative effects on officers’ psychological health and wellbeing. As police officers interact daily with victims, but also with other officers, social services, and institutions, the limits between tasks and needs may directly affect how they manage stress, trauma, and notions of individual and organisational responsibility. As such, boundary work may be a useful framework to understand and even improve how victim support police officers interact with other individuals and organisations. Drawing from a ground-breaking qualitative, in-depth research with police officers that provide support to victims of gender-based and domestic violence, this paper analyses conscious and unconscious boundaries as key elements in the officers’ wellbeing. Informed by the empirical findings of a case study of Catalonia's Mossos d’Esquadra police corps, this paper explores how victim support officers negotiate their individual and organisational boundaries as they interact with other agents and institutions, and how these negotiations affect them. This paper argues for the relevance of an officer's agency and discretion for distinguishing between conscious and unconscious boundaries, as their limits may be blurred throughout the wide range of interactions.

Value co-creation for digital innovation: An interorganizational boundary-spanning perspective

Despite the enthusiasm for engaging in interorganizational collaboration to enable digital product innovation, firms often face challenges in integrating knowledge across organizational boundaries. Our research examines how collaborating firms use Interorganizational Systems (IOS) tools and project coordinators to overcome knowledge boundaries in different types of ideation tasks. Drawing on boundary-spanning theory, we conceptualize IOS tools as boundary objects, project coordinators as boundary spanners, and the interdependence of ideation tasks as moderators of the impacts of boundary objects and spanners on knowledge integration. Our findings suggest that IOS tools help overcome syntax and semantic knowledge boundaries by transferring and sharing information when the interdependence of idea implementation tasks is high, and project coordinators help overcome pragmatic knowledge boundaries by building reciprocity of innovation participants when the interdependence of idea generation tasks is high. Our research contributes to value co-creation literature by developing a boundary-spanning mechanism to explain the roles of boundary objects and boundary spanners in overcoming different knowledge boundaries to enable digital product innovation at the inter-firm level.

Security approaches for electronic health data handling through the Semantic Web: A scoping review

Integration of health information systems are crucial to advance the effective delivery of healthcare for individuals and communities across organizational boundaries. Semantic Web technologies may be used to connect, correlate, and integrate heterogeneous datasets spread over the internet. However, when working with sensitive data, such as health data, security mechanisms are needed. A scoping review of the literature was undertaken to provide a broad view of security mechanisms applied to, or along with, Semantic Web technologies that could allow its use with health data. Searches were conducted in the most relevant databases for the scope of this work. The findings were classified according to the main objective and features presented by each solution. Twenty-six studies were included in the review. They introduced mechanisms that addressed several security attributes, such as authentication, authorization, integrity, availability, confidentiality, privacy, and provenance. These mechanisms support access control frameworks, semantic and functional interoperability infrastructures, and privacy compliance solutions. The findings suggest that the application and use of Semantic Web technologies is still growing, with the healthcare area being particularly interested. The main security mechanisms for Semantic Web technologies, the key security attributes and properties, and the main gaps in the literature were identified, helping to understand the technical needs to mitigate the risks of handling personal health information over the Semantic Web. Also, this research has shown that complex and robust solutions are available to successfully address several security properties and features, depending on the context that the electronic health data is being managed.

Porous organizational boundaries and associated states: introducing memberness in international organizations.

The current binary understanding of membership in international organizations (IOs), especially regional organizations (ROs), creates blind spots and biases in our understanding of who matters in IOs, as well as why and how they matter. Existing scholarship primarily looks at full member-states or non-state actors to capture who influences such organizations. Associated states are often portrayed as passive receivers of IO rules instead of active contributors. We address this blind spot and resulting analytical bias by exploring what types of association relationships exist and how they impact IOs. We propose a novel conceptualization of membership that we call memberness. On the level of IOs, memberness is based on the relative openness of organizational boundaries and stratified access via material and ideational contributions. On the level of states, memberness captures associated states' individual choices to contribute materially and/or ideationally to an IO. Memberness moves away from a purely rights-based understanding of membership (or who you are in an IO) to include a capacity-based understanding (or what you do in an IO). This shift in focus uncovers new channels of influence on IOs. Associated states' material and ideational contributions to IOs constitute three memberness types: payroller, sponsor, and advisor. We argue that these memberness types impact IOs' vitality, design, and performance in previously unrecognized ways. We illustrate these types with empirical examples from ROs across the globe and discuss the implications of memberness for IO research programs.

Smart collaborative ecosystem: leading complex school systems

PurposeThe need to innovate and apply alternative forms of school organization is evident as the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a need to establish new conceptualizations of schools and education management. The paradigm shift in learning inexorably necessitates a corresponding paradigm shift in educational organization, administration and management in order to build organizational resilience and capital. This study proposed framework seeks to address this issue by proposing a transformation of educational organization and management, shifting away from the unilateral, hierarchical school models and towards a unique, smart collaborative school ecosystem in which residents, industries, schools, universities and research centers can create new digital knowledge and inventive products, services and solutions by enlarging their capitals.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon Bourdieu's theory of social capital, our theoretical contribution is to present the influence of three forms of capital (social, economic and cultural) in cultivating educational capacity and resilience in the school ecosystem, with a particular focus on the role of digital capital in reinforcing the school ecosystem capitals. The authors also argue that ecosystem leaders and principals as boundary spanners play an important role in promoting capital exchange and enlargement as they balance the permeability of organizational boundaries at times of crisis by maneuvering across fields.FindingsAchieving educational improvement and building organizational capacity and resilience through the enlargement of system (and subsystem) capitals requires that key actors develop synchronized interpretations of educational aims and functions in various contexts. The authors delineate the importance of developing a synchronization strategy in the proposed conceptualization of smart and resilient school ecosystems.Originality/valueBy integrating research from both non-educational and educational literature, the proposed framework provides a new perspective for educational administration, organization and management, shifting away from the unilateral, hierarchical school models toward a unique, smart collaborative school ecosystem in which members can create new knowledge by enlarging their capitals. Practical lessons for leaders and policymakers from our conceptual framework are proposed.

An assurance process for Big Data trustworthiness

Modern (industrial) domains are based on large digital ecosystems where huge amounts of data and information need to be collected, shared, and analyzed by multiple actors working within and across organizational boundaries. This data-driven ecosystem poses strong requirements on data management and data analysis, as well as on data protection and system trustworthiness. However, although Big Data has reached its functional maturity and represents a key enabler for enterprises to compete in the global market, the assurance and trustworthiness of Big Data computations (e.g., security, privacy) are still in their infancy. While functionally appealing, Big Data does not provide a transparent environment with clear non-functional properties, impairing the users’ ability to evaluate its behavior and clashing with modern data-privacy regulations. In this paper, we present a novel assurance process for Big Data, which evaluates the Big Data pipelines, and the Big Data ecosystem underneath, to provide a comprehensive measure of their trustworthiness. To the best of our knowledge, this approach is the first attempt to address the general problem of Big Data trustworthiness in an holistic way. We experimentally evaluate our solution in a real Big Data Analytics-as-a-Service environment, first presenting a detailed walkthrough evaluation, and then showing its feasibility and negligible performance overhead (i.e., approx 1 min).

Tension between the safe flow of government data across organizational boundaries and fragmentations in secure collaboration: the Chinese e-government

PurposeThe study focuses on influential factors of collaboration on government data security by the Chinese government.Design/methodology/approachThe article explores the case of e-government in the Chinese centralized unitary state system context, using a structured–pragmatic–situational (SPS) approach and the boundary theory as an analytical lens.FindingsThe findings indicate that e-government operates in highly interconnected environments where the safe flow of government data requires collaborative and cross-boundary strategies. Any organization is a potential “weakest link”. In addition, collaboration is fragmented by ambiguous accountability and organizational inertia across government departments, resources differences and limited visibility and measurability of security efforts across government levels and conflicts and uncertainties in principal–agent relationships. The solutions for those obstacles are also discussed from the multi-function, multi-level and multi-actor dimensions, respectively. A multi-dimensional overarching security model for the flow of government data is proposed.Originality/valueThe study advances the technology-oriented micro-analysis of previous studies on government data security to cross-organizational revealing at the macrolevel by connecting streams of research in information systems and public administration. These findings will contribute to making the safe flow of government data more resilient in the transformation of e-government.

Interorganizational Systems and Supply Chain Agility in Uncertain Environments: The Mediation Role of Supply Chain Collaboration

The economy is recovering in today’s postpandemic phase, but uncertainties such as supply chain disruptions remain a top risk. Environmental uncertainty creates the need for swift supply chain adjustments in response to these external changes. Supply chain agility (SCA) has been recognized as a key capability for firms working to achieve superior performance in uncertain business environments. SCA is challenging to achieve, however, because it requires the firm and its supply chain partners to collaborate closely yet flexibly across organizational boundaries. Considering interorganizational systems (IOS) have been widely deployed to establish digital connections across organizational boundaries, this study aims to explore to what extent and how IOS as boundary objects, characterized by standardization and adaptability, affect SCA under different levels of environmental uncertainty. This study provides guidance for information technology (IT) and business directors on how to achieve SCA through the design or implementation of IOS, provides guidance for business directors on how to invest more effectively to capture opportunities and deal with risks, and advises business and IT directors on how to respond appropriately to different levels of environmental uncertainty (e.g., IT directors should design adaptive IOS and business directors should invest in supply chain collaboration when environmental uncertainty is high).

YouTube’s Yoga with Adriene as a somametamnemata: Exploring experiences of self-care and wellness in times of crisis

Drawing on the Foucauldian technologies of the self, this study explores how individuals re-envision practices of wellbeing outside of traditional organizational contexts during extreme events. Based on a thematic analysis of 7234 comments posted on the Yoga with Adriene YouTube channel in 2020, this study unpacks a technologically mediated practice of self-care, which we conceptualize as somametamnemata. Our findings illustrate three entangled aspects of somametamnemata relating to yoga, a form of bodywork: Caring about self through practicing yoga online; caring about self and others through sharing about yoga in written comments; and caring about self and others through responding to shared verbalizations of yoga. This study distinguishes somametamnemata from known practices of self-care, advancing existing literature on technologies of self by overcoming the dichotomy between negative views of ill-being and positive views of wellbeing. By situating the potentiality of individual wellbeing within ill-being, we shift debates and discussions of “corporate wellness” beyond organizational boundaries.

Driving CSR and Sustainability Culture: Role of HR

Although Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been an extremely critical pillar for many years now, the role that the human resources function plays in facilitating a more socially responsible and sustainable organisation remains unclear. In practice, this lack of clarity is due to the multiple factors including not integrating the human resources (HR) and CSR functions. This article provides a broader perspective on the role HR should play in CSR and Sustainability as well as its impact beyond organisational boundaries. The overall orientation of the HR leadership to ensure that it recognises the criticality of CSR and its own role in facilitating this charter in an organisation as a key metric for the function itself, is an important step in this direction.

Open innovation: status quo and quo vadis - an analysis of a research field

AbstractOpen innovation is now a widely used concept in academia, industry, and policy-making. According to the recent report “The Open Innovation Barometer”, released by the Economist, 90% of organizations have either adopted or are planning to implement key open innovation practices by opening up their organizational boundaries to collaborative innovation in the next three years (The Economist Group 2022). However, the social and economic changes imposed by the emerging processes of transition towards a more digital and sustainable society raise questions on how the open innovation field of studies is evolving to meet new, emerging needs. By combining bibliometric techniques and content analysis, this study illustrates how this research community has evolved in the last 12 years. More specifically, this study provides a descriptive analysis of the literature on open innovation, defines its knowledge structure, and illustrates a representative picture of the theoretical landscape. Our analysis shows that attempts to consolidate established topics and theoretical approaches in this field of studies go hand in hand with the emergence of new conversations about unexplored dimensions of open innovation. We conclude this article by outlining some avenues for future research on how to conceptualize, theorize, and research (methods and analytical techniques) open innovation.

The nursing home as a hub: boundary work as a key to community health promotion.

This article considers ways in which a nursing home can come to serve as a hub for community health promotion. Inspired by the term 'boundary crossing' (Akkerman and Bakker. Boundary crossing and boundary objects. Rev Educ Res 2011;81:132-69), we suggest the notion of 'boundary work' to illustrate how a nursing home arranges community activities and includes a wide range of participants. In health research, a 'hub' refers to a space in which activities and expertise are 'bound together' over time. The concept of the hub indicates that health organizations have the power to become centres for health promotion by initiating new collaborations and opening up initiatives in two-way processes with the local community. The term 'boundary work' supports a perspective that dissolves organizational, professional and conceptual boundaries and directs attention towards social inclusion as a key to community health promotion in and beyond institutionalized elderly care. The article is based on a 4-year-long practice-based study of social innovation in elderly care in Norway and Denmark. Empirical illustrations show boundary work in which a nursing home comes to serve as a hub. We discuss a flexible framework for understanding, mapping and planning participatory approaches for health and wellbeing (South et al. An evidence-based framework on community-centred approaches for health: England, UK. Health Promot Int 2019;34:356-66) and briefly connect these approaches to the concept of social innovation as a possible future research path.

HRM and disenfranchisement: Working beyond organizational boundaries to tackle societal barriers

From a practical perspective, employers have the potential to serve as an important societal mechanism for tackling grand challenges like disenfranchisement because they wield significant financial, social, human, and political capital. We posit that they may also have an obligation to take positive action to help solve issues in the community in which they operate. One of the main ways in which employers interact with society is through the labor market, as represented by the human resource management (HRM) function. We believe that HRM has significant capacity for addressing disenfranchisement beyond the boundaries of the organization through both functional and normative policies and programs. Based on recent ethics-HRM scholarship, we go beyond the typical business case approach to present a moral argument based in utilitarian and universal theoretical perspectives for why employers should seek to mitigate the impact of George et al.'s (2016) four societal barriers that lead to disenfranchisement. We build a 2 × 3 matrix model based on HRM's societal support role (Podgorodnichenko, Edgar, & McAndrew, 2020), as well as pictorial models, that provides practical recommendations related to the HRM responsibility areas of staffing, compensation, and training and development designed to prevent disenfranchisement.

A study on the causes of employee turnover and different retention tactics developed by business

The paper on the topic “A study on the causes of employee turnover and different retention tactics developed by businesses” is mainly concentrate on various causes that result in the resignation of an employee in this present scenario. The term resignation is defined as “the movement of the employees beyond organizational boundaries” or it can also be “rotation of the workers around the labour market; between firms, jobs and occupation; and between states of employment and unemployment”. This paper deals with the various causes that result in this great resignation drive. In organizational point of view, replacing an experienced employee is costly as it required training. In order to overcome this, the firm must try to retain experienced employees. Here, this paper also look into various strategies that the firm can adopt to reduce attrition rate. It also include various ways to implement motivational theories in an organization to reduce employee turnover rate and retain them.

Navigating MNE control and coordination: A critical review and directions for future research.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41267-023-00600-7.

The role of co-production in a conflictual planning process: the case of Haga station in Gothenburg, Sweden

This paper draws on the intersection of the themes of co-production, knowledge use, and planning that are relevant for urban transformation debate. In theory, co-production is seen to have the potential to facilitate conflict resolution, and thereby contribute to inclusive governance and transformative change. However, critical voices argue that these theoretical aspirations have limited effects in practice. Here we analyze the role of co-production in urban planning to better understand its role in conflict resolution and its potential to contribute to urban transformation. We provide a knowledge-based analysis of the possibilities and limitations of institutional and participatory co-production as it is conceived, designed, and applied in a specific conflictual strategic planning process in a case of Haga station which is a part of complex infrastructure development project, the West Link, in Gothenburg, Sweden. Through conducting an in-depth qualitative empirical analysis of the knowledge use practices in the planning of Haga station, we bring the discussion of co-production from theory to practice and take a critical look at its limitations. The results show that co-production worked well within and among the participating governmental organizations, even across distinct organizational boundaries. However, it was more limited between the public organizations and informal opposition actors, despite formal structures and processes aimed specifically at these types of participation. The analysis of knowledge use practices shows how the conflict was exacerbated due to the conflation of incommensurable knowledge claims by the institutional and oppositional actors, leading to a crisis of legitimacy for the involved public agencies.

Barriers to, and Enablers for, Stakeholder Collaboration in Risk-Sensitive Urban Planning: A Systematised Literature Review

The lack of stakeholder collaboration has been recognised as a prominent hindrance in implementing risk-sensitive urban planning for creating resilient environments for communities against climate-induced risks. This study presents the outcome of a systematised literature review that was conducted to identify the barriers to stakeholder collaboration, as well as the enablers that assist stakeholder collaboration in risk-sensitive urban planning. The study identified thirty-three barriers which were classified under thirteen themes and four major categories (external barriers, inter-organisational barriers, intra-organisational barriers, and personal barriers). The review also identified forty-five enablers which can be used in surmounting the identified barriers. The dependency analysis of the barriers, conducted by adopting the interpretive structural modelling approach, shows that the barriers with a high driving power are external barriers, which are political barriers, policies and legislation-related barriers, and governance-related barriers that are beyond the organisational boundary and control. The research found that the enablers to overcome those high driving barriers are gaining political support for implementing inter-organisational collaboration or adapting the apolitical approach for the collaboration process, strengthening the laws and forming adaptive policies to support collaboration, and establishing transparent and accountable collaborative governance.