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Effective project learning can prevent projects from repeating the same mistakes; however, knowledge codification is required for project-to-project learning to be up-scaled across the temporal, geographical and organisational barriers that constrain personalised learning. This paper explores the state of practice for the structuring of codified project learnings as concrete boundary objects with the capacity to enable externalised project-to-project learning across complex boundaries. Cross-domain reconceptualisation is proposed to enable further research and support the future development of standardised recommendations for boundary objects that can enable project-to-project learning at scale.

An integrative literature review method has been applied, considering knowledge, project learning and boundary object scholarship as state-of-practice sources.

It is found that the extensive body of boundary object literature developed over the last three decades has not yet examined the internal structural characteristics of concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning and boundary-spanning capacity. Through a synthesis of the dispersed structural characteristic recommendations that have been made across examined domains, a reconceptualised schema of 30 discrete characteristics associated with boundary-spanning capacity for project-to-project learning is proposed to support further investigation.

This review makes a novel contribution as a first cross-domain examination of the internal structural characteristics of concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning. The authors provide directions for future research through the reconceptualisation of a novel schema and the identification of important and previously unidentified research gaps.

This paper seeks to advance the study of knowledge boundary spanning by approaching spanning as a process that involves four spanning mechanisms.

Building on the insights from practice‐based view of knowledge and knowledge management literature more generally, the authors formalize and articulate two spanning mechanisms (boundary practice and boundary discourse), in addition to two other previously established spanning mechanisms (boundary object and boundary spanner).

The paper formalizes two further spanning mechanisms and suggests an integrative framework for examining the mutual and compounding effect between the four spanning mechanisms. Building on the suggested framework, the process of spanning is analysed as a time‐based combination of various mechanisms which evolve over time. The framework opens new windows to look at the projective and emergent mode of spanning mechanisms as a duality, rather than a dualism.

Researchers are freed to explore the deployment order of the spanning mechanisms and the conflicting or synergistic effects. Practitioners would benefit from tracing successful spanning processes for replicating in similar contexts to advance collaboration efforts.

Boundary practice and boundary discourse are introduced as well as synthesizing the mechanisms into a coherent framework. Viewing boundary spanning as a process that includes dynamic combination of four spanning mechanisms is a particularly novel insight that can stimulate future research avenues.

Digitalization is one of the most important phenomena that characterize the last decade – not only in business-to-consumer markets but also in business-to-business as well. The advent of digital technologies has multiplied the number and type of touchpoints between actors, thus generating new spaces of interaction where cross-boundary movements are frequent and traverse physical and digital contexts. All these elements, in turn, produce a higher need for coordination in business relationships. By using the concept of boundary objects, the purpose of this paper is to understand the main functions of boundary objects to coordinate business relationships across digital and physical contexts.

The empirical research is based on two case studies where the role of boundary objects is particularly emphasized: Salesforce.com and 3DiTALY. 27 qualitative interviews with key referents have been carried out. To analyze data, the authors applied a constructionist perspective based on Carlile’s (2004) framework of transferring, translating and transforming knowledge across boundaries.

The study will identify six functions that boundary objects play in coordinating business relationships across physical and digital contexts. It will also show the relevance of a mental network space of shared understanding to enable changes in the relational network space.

This study makes concrete the abstract idea of boundary objects. Therefore, it sheds light on the opportunity of managing strategically boundary objects in order to improve their effectiveness in digital environments.

The study will contribute to IMP research on b-to-b relationships by showing that, in digital contexts, boundary objects are key to coordinate interaction in space and cross-boundary movements. The study will show that once considering a digital context, the traditional functions of boundary objects in terms of transfer, translation, and transformation can be further declined into sub-functions. The study will also provide important managerial implications on how boundary objects can be strategically used by companies to increase the effectiveness of their business relationships.

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.

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 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.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze friction and controversies with interaction processes and their effects on forming new resource interfaces, through the lens of boundary objects.

The empirical setting consists of two organizations that are trying to enhance their competitive advantage through digitalization. During the process of data collection four different boundary objects were identified. The study illustrates how these boundary objects were characterized in terms of their modularity, standardization, abstractness and tangibility. This paper provides an analysis of how respondents perceived that the development of these boundary objects affected the creation of novel resource interfaces, and the resulting friction and controversy between new and old structures.

The study concludes that within a producer–user setting a focal boundary object will take on tangible and standardized properties, and the interaction process will expose friction in terms of both power struggles and resource incompatibilities. On the other hand, a boundary object’s modularity gives the actors central to the interaction room to maneuver and avoid resource incompatibilities and the development setting will hence be characterized by controversies.

The analysis indicates that the way individuals perceive boundary objects is central to interaction processes, answering calls for studies that investigate the role of objects within subject-to-object interaction.

This article aims to explore how objects function in integration efforts in health and social care contexts.

The article draws on boundary object theory and empirical data collected from a range of health and social care integration initiatives in Wales to illustrate the value of the focus on objects and to identify the potential implications of this approach for studies in other national contexts.

Attention to objects can shed light on the dynamics of integration, its potential and limits, offering insights that conventional analysis might otherwise miss.

The data drawn on in this paper are illustrative. Exploring the role of objects in integration requires more focused studies.

The results suggest that integration designers and managers need to pay closer attention to the attachments that practitioners develop to objects.

This is a highly original paper in view of its innovative use of boundary object theory in the context of integration, and its contribution to theory, research and practice.

Social media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A root metaphor of the boundary object domain is the notion of relatively static and inert objects spanning similarly static boundaries. A strong sociomaterial perspective allows the immisciblity of object and boundary to be challenged, since a key tenet of this perspective is the ongoing and mutually constituted performance of the material and social. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The aim of the research is to draw upon sociomateriality to explore the operation of social media platforms as intra-organizational boundary objects. Given the novel perspective of this study and its social constructivist ontology, the authors adopt an exploratory, interpretivist research design. This is operationalized as a case study of the use of an organizational blog by a major UK Government department over an extended period. A novel aspect of the study is the use of data released under a Freedom of Information request.

The authors present three exemplar instances of how the blog and organizational boundaries were performed in the situated practice of the case study organization. The authors draw on the literature on boundary objects, blogs and sociomateriality in order to provide a theoretical explication of the mutually constituted performance of the blog and organizational boundaries. The authors also invoke the notion of “extended chains of intra-action” to theorize changes in the wider organization.

Adoption of a sociomaterial lens provides a highly novel perspective of boundary objects and organizational boundaries. The study highlights the indeterminate and dynamic nature of boundary objects and boundaries, with both being in an intra-active state of becoming challenging conventional conceptions. The study demonstrates that specific material-discursive practices arising from the situated practice of the blog at the respective boundaries were performative, reconfiguring the blog and boundaries and being generative of further changes in the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the processes whereby organisational actors can seize the opportunities opened up through social media, and the way in which the relative information is managed. This allows these actors to move their occupational boundaries, exploiting the information for performance measurement purposes. The investigation was carried out within an organisational setting, where most occupational dynamics take place. The focus was on the role of artefacts within these occupational dynamics and the analysis drew upon the notion of boundary objects.

The research was based on case studies involving two organisations that make use of social media within and across several departments. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with social media managers, department managers, analysts and financial controllers and senior executives. The results of the qualitative analysis of the interviews were completed with secondary sources of information, company reports, communications, public policies, codes of conduct and social media platform analyses.

This paper has implications for accounting studies, showing how marketing and communications managers entering the field of performance management can take the lead in social media management by collecting information from social media, constructing indicators and gaining ground in several decision-making centres. The findings highlight the role of new artefacts and organisational roles, whose purpose is to build a digital community. This process involves crossing the boundaries between internal functions and the inside and outside environment, with a driving phenomenon becoming visible: hybridisation. Faced with this change, reluctant accountants with a traditional mindset are more likely to observe the process at a distance, focusing more on their routine operations based on conventional data.

This paper shows that information derived from social media is already a reality that has gained significance through the construction of boundary objects. The paper highlights a driving phenomenon that is emerging in the surge to occupy the organisational terrain for controlling social media: that of hybridisation. The concept of hybridisation is not new in management accounting studies, but in this study can be applied to carrying out a joint analysis on both the boundary objects and their organisational trajectory. In the context of social media accounting, hybridisation is of central importance if both actors and objects are to be effectively positioned at its boundary.