Boundary Spanning
Boundary spanning refers to the process of connecting and collaborating across different organizational boundaries, such as departments, teams, or external partners. It involves building relationships, sharing information, and coordinating activities to achieve common goals. Effective boundary spanning is crucial for fostering innovation, problem-solving, and creating synergies between different parts of an organization.
8 Key excerpts on "Boundary Spanning"
eBook - ePubCommunicating for Managerial Effectiveness
Challenges | Strategies | Solutions
- Phillip G. Clampitt(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Leaders must vigorously model the collaborative style while encouraging and helping others to do so through training and coaching. It requires a special person to artfully integrate all these skills. No wonder effective boundary spanners are so rare, valued, and esteemed. Conclusion All organizations, to some degree, have difficulties with Boundary Spanning that can be resolved by the strategies and tactics reviewed in Table 8.3. Unfortunately, the problem is frequently overlooked, and even when recognized, often the symptoms are treated instead of the causes. To a large extent, the problems are unavoidable in business because of the penchant for segmentation. Decreasing conflict, improving performance, and seizing opportunities are compelling reasons for taking active measures to promote Boundary Spanning. To be fair, we need to consider the flip side of the issue: Are there any dangers in encouraging Boundary Spanning? Yes. An overly integrated organization may increase uncertainty and slow decision-making. In the long run, though, the benefits outweigh these potential problems. In a sense, communicating across boundaries resembles taking a voyage into an unknown land. Daniel Boorstin, in his magnum opus The Discoverers, writes passionately about the real goal of the “discoverers”: The ability to come home again was essential if a people were to enrich, embellish, and enlighten themselves from far-off places. . . . Getting there was not enough. The internourishment of the peoples of the earth required the ability to get back, to return to the voyaging source, and transform the stay-at-homes by the commodities and the knowledge that the voyagers had found over there. 73 Table 8.3 Likewise, the boundary spanner seeks to enlighten, enrich, and empower individuals throughout the company. The frontier these days is not geographical but rather technical, informational, and managerial...
eBook - ePubAdvancing Talent Development
Steps Toward a T-Model Infused Undergraduate Education
- Philip Gardner, Heather N. Maietta, Heather N. Maietta(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Business Expert Press(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 3 Boundary Spanning and Performance: Applying Skills and Abilities Across Work Contexts Patricia M. Rowe and Maureen T. B. Drysdale Boundary Spanning Defined Traditionally, managers and human resource professionals seek to hire and promote individuals who possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) in their discipline necessary for successful job performance. The T-model, however, argues that in addition to deep disciplinary knowledge, individuals must have the ability to interact with people with depth in different disciplines as well as those across varying organizational, political, cultural, and societal boundaries. This Boundary Spanning ability permits them to build partnerships and collaborate with others by developing sustainable relationships, managing through negotiation and influences, and seeking to understand roles, motives, and responsibilities (Williams 2002). Boundary Spanning, referred to as the horizontal stroke, is unique to the T-model and thus requires further examination. As Beechler, Søndergaard, Miller, and Bird (2004) point out, Boundary Spanning can be considered at the organizational or the individual level. At the organizational level, Boundary Spanning refers to the need for organizations to develop more flexible structures rather than to maintain traditional rigid boundaries between functions and tasks. At the individual level, Boundary Spanning is the set of skills and abilities that are evidenced through communication behaviors and interpersonal networks. Here we are considering Boundary Spanning at the individual level, though to be a boundary spanner, one must be in an organization with flexible boundaries. What exactly are Boundary Spanning abilities? For the most part, these abilities have been poorly defined and are descriptions of what various authors have thought might be important...
eBook - ePubReview of Marketing Research
Volume 4
- Naresh Malhotra, Naresh Malhotra(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Boundary spanners are required to constantly interact with customers, undertake tasks that involve emotional labor, and provide discretion to tailor their behaviors to individual customer needs, problems, and demands. Boundary Spanning work is sensitive to internal and external organizational environments. Variation in consumer demands (e.g., seasonal and/or economic variations in demand for products/services) and in internal operations (e.g., new product/service introductions or interface technologies) often affects boundary spanners unpredictably. Boundary spanners are organizationally monitored and controlled (e.g., via human supervision, electronic, audio, and video devices). Organizations are increasingly concerned about the productivity of boundary spanners, while keeping the quality of customer service delivered in focus. Boundary Spanning work is highly stressful. Such work is likened to a “three-cornered fight” with the customer (demanding attention and service) and the organization (demanding efficiency and productivity) at the two ends and the boundary spanner “caught in the middle.” Boundary Spanning roles are profit centers. They are expected to cross-sell, up-sell, and more-sell while in the process of providing high-quality service/information. This dual accountability injects competing pressures on boundary spanners. Of the various theories applied to study effectiveness of marketing-oriented boundary spanners, role theory is arguably the most promising so far. With its roots in sociology dating back to the fifties (Merton 1949; Rommetveit 1954), early grounded research on work organizations can be traced to the sixties. The much-cited work of Kahn et al. (1964) and Belasco’s (1966) research with salespeople were important steps in translating sociological notions of role theory into meaningful and relevant constructs for the study of marketing-oriented boundary spanners. For instance, independent of Kahn et al...
eBook - ePubCollaboration in Public Policy and Practice
Perspectives on Boundary Spanners
- Williams, Paul(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Policy Press(Publisher)
...The consequences of dysfunctional interpersonal relationships are protracted and ineffective collaborative working, with low levels of cooperation and high costs of lack of coordination. Other areas of difficulty and tension include managing without power and balancing the opposing forces of cooperation and competition, and these are discussed in the final chapter. Review of main points Boundary spanners can claim to embrace specialised areas of knowledge, expertise and experience. Key knowledge areas relate particularly to the context within which they operate – roles, responsibilities, motivations, cultures and accountability frameworks. The ability to understand interdependence and relationships is especially relevant, and an additional source of support can be gathered from interorganisational and intersectoral experience – working in different types of organisation, in different policy areas, in different sectors and within different teams. The question of whether an effective boundary spanner is somehow influenced by particular personality traits is a contested one. However, there are many examples of helpful personal attributes cited in the literature including being extrovert, honesty, respectful, trusting, open, sociable, diplomatic and persistent. The boundary spanner is faced with a range of tensions, ambiguities and paradoxes in the course of their work, including managing in and across multiple modes of governance; blurred personal and professional relationships; dilemmas of multiple accountabilities; and appreciating multiple framing processes. Boundary spanners need to know how and when to switch between different modes of governance, but face tensions because of the incongruencies that exist at the interfaces between them. The interface between personal and professional relationships is often blurred, causing the boundary spanner problems in differentiating between them. This has implications for processes of listening, empathy and trust...
eBook - ePubMaking Collaboratives Work
How Complex Organizational Partnerships Succeed
- Susan Meyers Chandler(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...9 Relationship Building and Communication Our task is not to fix the blame for the past, it’s to fix the course for the future. President John F. Kennedy Introduction Stern and Coleman (2015) note that, particularly in the area of environmental planning and resource management, involving stakeholders in the collaborative processes has proven to increase the likelihood that the groups can find acceptable decisions, limit gridlock, and avoid legal action, such as lawsuits against the public-sector agencies. They suggest that this is due to the trust that develops in the collaborative processes when the members can play the role of boundary spanners and assist in the development of broad and positive relationships among all of the members of the collaboratives, both internally and externally. Boundary spanners are those members within a collaborative who successfully represent their own home organizations, within the group, as well as have connections and positive affiliations with others outside of the group. These people can thus share information and make positive connections across the group, and across organizational boundaries. They engage in relationship-building activities and are seen as people with good communication skills, are good negotiators, honest brokers, and conflict resolvers. Boundary spanners can help the group understand each other’s issues and concerns and can build a shared definition of the problem, find zones of agreement related to the group member’s goals, and build mutual trust. This logically leads to members feeling accountable to one another, which is a crucial precursor to successful outcomes. Boundary spanners know the organizational boundaries of their own agency or organization but can also see the porous possibilities of where their organization can cross over the boundaries of another...
eBook - ePubInternal Relationship Management
Linking Human Resources to Marketing Performance
- Michael D Hartline, David Bejou(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...These boundary spanners largely determine the effectiveness of a marketing effort since they are responsible for the delivery of value to customers and the generation of organizational revenues. As competitive pressures continue to rise, organizations challenge these boundary spanners to enhance customer satisfaction and further customer relationships in order to increase profitability (Crosby, Evans and Cowles 1990). Such pressures call for these employees to access the necessary tools and resources to identify and meet a broad range of customer needs. This, in turn, places demands back on the organization to properly support the boundary spanner (Bitner 1995; Evans, Arnold and Grant 1999; Schneider and Bowen 1995). There is growing evidence for strong correlations among the quality of organizational support, the boundary spanner's performance, and customer satisfaction (Davis 1991; Rust et al. 1996; Schneider, White and Paul 1998). Thus, an organization's ability to provide effective, high quality support to its Boundary Spanning employees may be an important source of competitive advantage (Heskett et al. 1994). A critical form of organizational support is internal services provision, such as information systems, market research, training, accounting, and facilities supports, which provides boundary spanners with the needed resources to serve and satisfy customers (Berry and Parasuraman 1991; Davis 1991). While boundary spanners are not charged directly for these services, internal support services are hoped to be valuable and thus utilized by the Boundary Spanning employee. Organizations face significant challenges, however, in the design and delivery of support services. On the one hand, boundary spanners desire high quality support services in terms of flexibility, availability, and responsiveness to their specific requests (Gremler, Bitner and Evans 1994)...
eBook - ePubLanguage Management
From Bricolage to Strategy in British Companies
- Natalie Victoria Wilmot(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Multilingual Matters(Publisher)
...Such an approach places boundary spanners at the heart of organisational strategy, and demonstrates the considerable power they are able to exert over the overall direction of the organisation. Although previous studies have demonstrated the importance of owner-managers with regard to their language skills and previous international experience (e.g. Knowles et al., 2006), this demonstrates that employees at lower levels of the organisational hierarchy, outside of senior management teams, are also highly significant in this regard. Barner-Rasmussen et al. (2014) identify four types of boundary-spanning activity, ranging from exchanging information as the least complex type, through to intervening and shaping organisational activities as the most complex. Although this typology predominantly refers to internal boundary spanners within an MNC, some of these activities are also observed within the case organisations. Certainly, given that, with the exception of the Chinese subsidiary manager, all of the multilingual boundary spanners identified are in export sales roles at their respective organisations, exchanging information with clients is a large part of their role. Additionally, they fulfil linking activities, as they are able to bring together departments and clients who, without their support, would be unable to communicate, as demonstrated by the boundary spanners supporting the accounts department and chasing unpaid invoices from their clients – an activity that would ordinarily be seen as outside the remit of the sales manager role. In terms of the higher order activities, we have previously seen how they are able to influence organisational strategy and open up new markets because of their language skills, or even just access new customers where there is a shared social identity with key individuals (Tajfel & Turner, 1979): In many cases, completely accidentally, we found that there was one or two Polish people working in certain companies...
eBook - ePubGlobal Enterprise Management, Volume II
New Perspectives on Challenges and Future Developments
- A. Camillo, A. Camillo(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...The governance structure of IJVs varies, but if an appointee of the local partner is the managing director, typically the Western MNE will seek to have an expatriate representative located at the IJV to ensure direct interaction between it and the IJV. The manager of the MNE business unit who is delegated with the responsibility for interacting with the IJV will effectively also be part of the governance structure. Each of the individuals occupying these positions interacts with other individuals who are located in different organizational systems, and each is therefore engaged in boundary-spanning roles (Johnson & Duxbury, 2010). Such roles involve sharing information with other boundary spanners and acting as a “relationships lubricant” for effective cooperation and problem solving with the IJV exchange partners (Huang et al. 2013, p. 2). The interaction between boundary spanners is complex not only because they have to operate across diverse business environments but also because of the competing interests of the IJV partners they represent (Gong et al. 2005; Mohr & Puck, 2007). Schotter and Beamish (2011) propose that the Boundary Spanning ability is a function of individual personality, organizational ambidexterity, and high levels of knowledge concerning products and/or services. This indicates a mixed bundle of capabilities consisting of industry experience at national and international levels, IJV experience, and cultural intelligence (CQ). The concept of CQ aims at capturing variations in individuals’ ability to operate across culturally diverse settings. Earley and Ang (2003) distinguish three facets of CQ. Cognitive CQ is the knowledge of the norms, practices, and conventions in different cultures, and it draws on metacognitive abilities such as strategies individuals employ to acquire and understand cultural knowledge...
