Understanding organizational boundaries

This article investigates various conceptualizations of organizational boundaries and seeks to establish a point of departure for the Globe special issue: Crossing organizational boundaries. It reviews literature that has paid attention to organizational boundaries in their own right and presents and discusses various definitions and categorizations of these boundaries. Because of the special issue’s concentration on the crossing of organizational boundaries, two concepts that have been particularly helpful for the understanding of cross-boundary interactions are discussed as well: the notion of boundary spanning implying the ability of maintaining and facilitating relations between distinct organizational entities and the concept of the boundary object, originally defined as a conceptual response to the challenge of understanding inter-organizational collaboration in practice. The notion of the boundary object has been a useful conceptual instrument for researchers studying the successful collaboration of actors with differing understandings of and interests in the subject of collaboration. In the article’s final section, the different contributions to the special issue are presented.

本文针对组织边界的多种概念化路径展开研究，旨在为《Globe》特刊《跨越组织边界》确立研究出发点。本文回顾了专门聚焦组织边界本身的相关文献，并对各类组织边界的定义与分类进行了系统梳理与探讨。鉴于本次特刊的核心议题为组织边界跨越，本文还探讨了两大有助于理解跨边界互动的核心概念：其一为边界跨越（boundary spanning），其内涵为维系并促进不同组织实体间关系的能力；其二为边界对象（boundary object），该概念最初被提出，旨在回应实践中理解组织间协作难题的理论需求。边界对象这一概念，已成为研究对协作主题持有不同理解与利益诉求的行动者成功开展协作的学者们的实用理论工具。本文最后一节，对本特刊的各篇投稿文献进行了梳理与介绍。