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How to improve healthcare for the ageing population is attracting academia attention. Emerging technologies (i.e. robots and intelligent agents) look relevant. This paper aims to analyze the role of cognitive assistants as boundary objects in value co-creation practices. We include the perceptions of the main actors – patients, (in)formal caregivers, healthcare professionals – for a fuller network perspective to understand the potential overlap between boundary work and value co-creation practices.

We adopted a grounded approach to gain a contextual understanding design to effectively interpret context and meanings related to human–robot interactions. The study context concerns 21 health solutions that had embedded the Watson cognitive platform and its adoption by the youngest cohort (50–64-year-olds) of the ageing population.

The cognitive assistant acts as a boundary object by bridging actors, resources and activities. It enacts the boundary work of actors (both ageing and professional, caregivers, families) consisting of four main actions (automated dialoguing, augmented sharing, connected learning and multilayered trusting) that elicit two ageing value co-creation practices: empowering ageing actors in medical care and engaging ageing actors in a healthy lifestyle.

We frame the role of cognitive assistants as boundary objects enabling the boundary work of ageing actors for value co-creation. A cognitive assistant is an “object of activity” that mediates in actors' boundary work by offering novel resource interfaces and widening resource access and resourceness. The boundary work of ageing actors lies in a smarter resource integration that yields broader applications for augmented agency.

Boundary setting is identified as an important and highly useful factor, both in management practice and in dealing with phenomena in management research. It has significant implications for how circumstances and phenomena will be analysed and interpreted. Change – moving or change in nature – is a key factor in all attempts to strategise and economise. The authors argue that boundary setting is critical in analysing and interpreting business problems, both in the practice of management and in business research. The nature and function of boundaries vary. It can be exemplified with two archetypes of organisation – the integrated hierarchy and the connected company. In the first, the basic principle for boundary setting is buffering to protect the company from external variations. In the second type, it is bridging – connecting the company with specific changing factors. One important consequence is that when analysing and handling boundaries, both location and permeability become the central aspects to consider.

This paper aims to elaborate the concepts of boundary subjects and boundary objects in constructing and communicating relevant accounting facts for managing product development (PD). Boundary subjects as reflective actors benefit effective accounting enactment, by building a shared understanding about different actors’ roles and information needs, and by helping to respond to these needs with new boundary objects.

The paper uses a longitudinal interventionist case study of a machinery manufacturer. The focus of this case study was the production ramp-up phase at the end of a PD program. Different actors’ needs were first collected and elaborated by interventionist researchers (boundary subjects). Then accounting prototypes (boundary objects) provided new means of communication.

The findings show that dealing with boundaries is crucial in accounting development. The role of boundary subjects was fundamental in the process of choosing, constructing, elaborating and communicating accounting facts. During this process, accounting prototypes integrated new accounting facts, the boundary subjects mitigated the boundaries and the boundary objects focused and restricted communication about accounting facts.

The paper tests the pragmatic constructivism approach by examining accounting enactment under uncertainty and ambiguity. The study refines pragmatic constructivism in terms of boundaries, boundary subjects as actors and boundary objects.

The intentional use of boundary subjects and objects as communication platform could push a more active inclusion of business controllers as active business partners.

The paper contributes to the literature on accounting development by highlighting the use of boundary subjects and boundary objects as fundamental mechanisms in constructing and communicating accounting facts.

Institutional arrangements for collaborative purposes have gained increasing attention within research on service ecosystems. For collaborations to be effective, actors need to undertake institutional work that will result in new institutional arrangements. When institutional work takes place across service ecosystems, actors may be confronted with non-harmonious or conflicting institutional arrangements, which need to be reconciled by translating the incompatible views of diverse ecosystems. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of boundary objects as a means of facilitating institutional work across ecosystems, and present their mechanism in undertaking institutional work.

Longitudinal qualitative interviews were conducted with three key actors (funding agency, service provider and clinicians) in providing home-based support services (HBSS). The data were analyzed by undertaking a thematic analysis of the transcripts, which helped to identify the actors’ views on the nature of HBSS and its impact as a boundary object within the implementation of the case-mix system, and thus to empirically illustrate the theoretical assumptions.

The data assisted in the creation of a conceptualization that maps out the process of boundary objects facilitating (disrupting and creating) institutional work. This study supports that boundary objects disrupt boundaries between actors’ ecosystems, which was a sufficient condition to dismantle institutional support for the practices of individual fields. Furthermore, the object has changed the type and extent of interaction between actors in an ecosystem to allow these actors to redefine their identity and role in the new institutional arrangement.

This work has developed a novel conceptualization for a boundary object-led translation process in facilitating institutional work. To the researchers’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the processes and mechanisms of boundary objects in facilitating institutional work across ecosystems.

This paper investigates the role of boundary objects and boundary work in the integration of risk management (RM) and performance management (PM) systems. In particular, the paper combines theoretical insights with an empirical focus to examine how shared contexts are created through the boundary work performed by key actors across knowledge boundaries.

The paper develops an exploratory qualitative case study from a local government context. The methodology is based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews.

Boundary objects can act as knowledge integration mechanisms, allowing key actors to understand the meanings and uses of RM and PM practices. The paper shows how collaborative versus competitive boundary work exerted by key actors can explain the creation of shared contexts leading to integration between RM and PM.

The results contribute to the debate about the integration of RM with other managerial systems. Differently from previous research, the integration theme is addressed in the present work by looking specifically to the integration between RM and PM. In doing so, the role of both boundary objects and the boundary work performed by relevant actors to demarcate their legitimacy and autonomy over preferred practices is portrayed.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce ecotones to the service literature as a conceptual extension of the service ecosystem (SE) framework.

To synthesise the contribution, an illustrative empirical case study with research of nine organisations and their service systems is developed.

Boundaries connect systems with their environment. Ecotone, a concept from natural ecosystems, provides a useful concept representing the boundary zones between adjacent systems, supporting emergent phenomena. The authors find that a service ecotone emerges through the interactions occurring at the intersections of relational, technological and institutional boundaries of two unique SEs. The case demonstrates ecotone edge effects – the unique landscape and diversity of actors and their roles – which play a role in the co-evolution of the separate SEs.

The ecotone concept provides an understanding of SE boundaries, helping practitioners understand the complex environments they operate. Developing strategy in complex ecosystems requires a clear understanding of where the boundaries of dependence and interdependence lie. The ecotone concept helps practitioners to develop responsiveness and resilience to their environment and take advantage of resources that may be currently unrecognised.

The authors introduce the ecotone concept and integrate it with service theory. This paper develops service ecotones for understanding the relationship between different systems that influence their functioning and development. Thus, ecotones suggest new avenues for understanding the diversity and roles of actors, and how new structural properties, resources and practices come to be through the tensions and interactions created in these complex boundaries of SEs.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the character of activities performed by project managers (PMs) in the early phases of product development in an interorganizational, multi‐project setting. The aim is to contribute to the extant literature on boundary work in projects by providing a typology of boundary activities and by presenting a conceptual model in which the relationship between these boundary activities is established.

This study is based on an explorative, in‐depth case study of a multi‐project setting where PMs assigned to three projects developed new products while simultaneously competing and collaborating. Each project's concept phase was followed by participative observations and ongoing interviews over a 15‐week period at two sites and in two countries.

It is understood that PMs in organizations collaborate and perform balancing activities. These balancing activities are part of a refinement process, which is created through three intertwined dimensions of boundary activities: administrative, sharing, and tuning. These, in turn, are constructed through complementary micro activities. These micro activities are politically colored and do not necessarily follow a prescribed and orderly path; instead, they are situation contingent and iterative in their character.

The character of boundary activities in coopetitive project settings should be further studied to better understand the early phases of product development.

The political dimension of product development activities in the early phases of product development should be acknowledged. By acknowledging the presence of politics, PMs will be more prepared to deal with the complexity and ambiguity that follows when trying to collaborate and compete simultaneously.

This paper takes a practice perspective and focuses on what people do in interorganizational new product development in situations characterised by coopetition.

The purpose of this paper is to add a little piece to the research on boundary work and inter-occupational cooperation by addressing two questions: how do actors perform boundary work in an inter-occupational cooperation project that seeks to improve the personnel health work in a hospital setting? What impact does the boundary work have on such cooperation in the personnel health project?

The study is based on individual, in-depth interviews and participative observations of focus group discussions conducted at a regional municipal organization in Sweden. Respondents are hospital line managers, experts and strategists in the HR departments, and experts from the internal occupational health service.

The concepts on boundary work, which include closing/opening boundary strategies, provide the framework for the empirical illustrations. The cooperation runs smoothly in the rehabilitation work because of an agreed upon process in which the professionals’ jurisdictions are preserved through closing strategies. Illness prevention and health promotion are not areas of inter-occupational cooperation because the stronger actors use closing strategies. While the weaker actors, who try to cooperate, use opening boundary strategies in these areas, they are excluded or marginalized.

The empirical investigation concerns one cooperation project and was completed at one data collection point.

No similar study of boundary work and inter-occupational cooperation in a hospital setting is available despite the frequency of this professional group configuration in practice. A more inclusive concept of professionalism may facilitate the study of boundary work and inter-occupational cooperation among actors with different professional authority.

Interactions are fundamental for successful relationships and stable cooperation in a business-to-business market. The main assumption in research on interactions, so obvious that usually not stated by researchers, is that they are set between humans. The development of artificial intelligence forces the re-examination of this assumption. This paper aims to conceptualize business virtual assistants (BVAs), a type of intelligent agent, as either a boundary object or an actor within business interactions.

Reference is made to the literature on business interactions, boundary objects and identity attribution to problematize the process of interpretation through which BVA obtains an identity. The ARA model and the model of interaction process is used to create a theoretical framework.

This paper contributes to the literature on business interactions, and to the core of the IMP discussion, in three aspects. The first provides a framework to understand the phenomenon of an artificial entity as an interlocutor in business interactions. While doing that a new type of entity, BVA, is introduced. The second contribution is the exploration and augmentation of the concept of a business actor. The third calls attention to BVA as a boundary object. These issues are seen as essential to move forward the discussion about the meaning of business interaction in the near future.

This paper conceptualizes the presence of a new entity – BVA – in the business landscape.

This research examines how knowledge and information are managed within two care networks. We develop a conceptual framework drawing on the notion of brokering and the 3T framework, which is used to describe the relative complexity of boundaries (referred to in the framework as syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) as well as capabilities and processes required to exchange information within the network. Previous research on brokering has focused on healthcare managers and professionals, but this research extends to patients and caregivers. Understanding knowledge exchange and brokering practices in healthcare is critical to the delivery of effective services.

For this case research, non-participant observation and experienced-based interviews were undertaken with healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers within two care networks.

The findings reveal brokering roles occupied by healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers support the transfer, translation and transformation of knowledge and information across functional and organisational boundaries. Enablers and disablers to brokering and the exchange of knowledge and information are also identified.

The study is limited to two care networks for long-term conditions within the UK. Further research opportunities exist to examine similar care networks that extend across professional and organisational boundaries.

This research informs healthcare professionals of the brokering capabilities that occur within networks and the enabling and disabling factors to managing knowledge across boundaries.

This paper provides a conceptual framework that categorises how increased levels of knowledge and information exchange and brokering practices are managed within care networks.