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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.

Work–nonwork policies and practices provide support for employee well-being, as well as a competitive advantage that can help differentiate organizations. However, not all work–nonwork policies and practices are effective, utilized, or relevant. In this chapter, the authors introduce “organizational boundary management strategy” as a way to leverage these policies and practices, making them more widely adopted and more effective. Organizational boundary management strategy refers to how an organization as a whole tends to support workers’ work–nonwork boundaries (i.e., via segmentation, integration, or somewhere in between). Although boundary management has historically tended to focus on how individuals navigate distinctions between work and personal life, the authors extend boundary management to the organization to suggest how understanding and aligning the organization’s overall boundary management strategies can support worker well-being. To expound on this, the authors present a model suggesting how organizational boundary management can be used to support worker well-being.

A core concept of work–home interface research is boundary permeability – the frequency with which elements from one domain cross, or permeate, the boundary of another domain. Yet, there remains ambiguity as to what these elements are and how these permeations impact important outcomes such as role satisfaction and role performance. The authors introduce a multidimensional perspective of work–home boundary permeability, identifying five forms of boundary permeation: task, psychological, role referencing, object, and people. Furthermore, based on the notion that employee control over boundary permeability behavior is the key to achieving role satisfaction and role performance, the authors examine how organizations’ HR practices, leadership, and norms impact employee control over boundary permeability in the work and home domains. The authors conclude with an agenda for future research.

Effective use of data across public health organisations (PHOs) is essential for the provision of health services. While health technology and data use in clinical practice have been investigated, interactions with data in non-clinical practice have been largely neglected. The purpose of this paper is to consider what constitutes data, and how people in non-clinical roles in a PHO interact with data in their practice.

This mixed methods study involved a qualitative exploration of how employees of a large PHO interact with data in their non-clinical work roles. A quantitative survey was administered to complement insights gained through qualitative investigation.

Organisational boundaries emerged as a defining issue in interactions with data. The results explain how data work happens through observing, spanning and shifting of boundaries. The paper identifies five key issues that shape data work in relation to boundaries. Boundary objects and processes are considered, as well as the roles of boundary spanners and shifters.

The study was conducted in a large Australian PHO, which is not completely representative of the unique contexts of similar organisations. The study has implications for research in information and organisational studies, opening fields of inquiry for further investigation.

Effective systems-wide data use can improve health service efficiencies and outcomes. There are also implications for the provision of services by other health and public sectors.

The study contributes to closing a significant research gap in understanding interactions with data in the workplace, particularly in non-clinical roles in health. Research analysis connects concepts of knowledge boundaries, boundary spanning and boundary objects with insights into information behaviours in the health workplace. Boundary processes emerge as an important concept to understand interactions with data. The result is a novel typology of interactions with data in relation to organisational boundaries.

External inputs are critical for organisational creativity. In order to bridge different thought worlds and cross-organisational barriers, managers must initiate and motivate boundary spanning processes. The purpose of this paper is to explore how boundary spanners manage creativity projects across organisational boundaries.

The authors link to previous literature and present findings from a comparative case study of managerial practices for managing creativity projects. Data were collected through interviews, secondary materials, site visits and observation.

Three meta-practices used by managers to manage boundary-spanning creative projects are presented: defining the creative space, making space for creativity and acting in the creative space. These practices are detailed in seven case studies of creative projects.

The analysis focuses on boundary spanning as a management process rather than a capability for organisations to self-organise. It extends the “boundary spanning as practice” literature by focusing on boundary spanning as a managerial practice and brings the problems related to resource mobilisation across both organisational and departmental boundaries to the fore.

Understanding the managerial dilemma faced by creativity managers is a first step to finding solutions. The discussed practices may inspire managers both in resolving creativity management problems and through self-reflection.

The authors contribute to research on boundary spanning practices by linking to creativity research, and bridge to research on management and governance in distributed and less-defined organisations.

Technological firms increasingly depend on open innovation to compete in hypercompetitive markets. To openly engage the creativity of a multitude of private actors, firms can rely on crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing challenges global companies as they span organizational boundaries to attract multiple local partners. Global companies must engage in boundary spanning to successfully communicate and create a sense of community with smaller local partners despite status and cultural differences. The collaboration between Google and developers in China deserves to be studied in particular, because it operates within a restricted market.

This paper argues that crowdsourcing for innovation on a global scale requires effective boundary spanning capabilities. These boundary-spanning practices ensure smooth cooperation with the crowd and solve problems relating to differences in status and organizational contexts. This study applies Bourdieu's theory of practice including the concept of capital (economic, intellectual, social and symbolic) to understand the social relationships between Google and a growing community of Chinese developers. It also draws on a case study including ten semistructured interviews, which have been triangulated with internal documents and data from selected websites.

Four types of capital (symbolic, intellectual, social and economic) have been identified as important devices to understand the sources of power and the stakes of Googlers and developers in the joint field. These types of capital contribute to structure the social fields in which developers and Google cooperate and their practice. The success of the collaboration between Google and Chinese developers can arguably be attributed to Google's ability to create boundary-spanning activities in order to reduce the endowment differential in the four types of capital and improve their communication. Therefore, this research provides a deep and conceptualized description of boundary-spanning practices, as well as providing a useful contribution for managers involved in crowdsourcing via platform in culturally different markets.

The main limitation of this study is methodological in nature, relating to the absence of interviews with board members of Google China who are reluctant to speak about Google activities in China for political raisons. This restriction is partly counterbalanced by the analysis of publicly available secondary data such as news and communications.

This research has generated practical recommendations for managers of organizations, which require optimal boundary spanning for crowdsourcing. Managers must understand the different sources of social boundaries between their organization and the crowd. The crowd should be segmented into smaller groups with distinctive identities, and organizations should systematically design boundary-spanning activities to address each boundary of each segment. The boundary-spanning activities involve a specific set of tools, programs and platforms to address the target group. Efficient boundary spanning depends on the necessity to select boundary spanners with high cultural intelligence and communication skills.

This paper draws on Bourdieu's theory of practice to investigate the role of boundary spanning in crowdsourcing for innovation, specifically in the joint field between Google and Chinese developers. This research reveals how boundary objects such as developer documents, websites, programs and events are essential for developers to be able to participate on Google's platform. Companies should be prepared to invest in the design and delivery of boundary-spanning activities and objects, knowing that these are also a locus for negotiation with local partners.

This research contributes to the literature by applying the boundary-spanner theory to Google crowdsourcing practices within a restricted market. Bourdieu's theory of practice has proven to be a potent perspective with which to better understand the positive role of boundary spanners in the joint field between Google and Chinese developers. Moreover, this practice perspective has not been used in prior research to highlight power relations in crowdsourcing for innovation. This study has shown that, in addition to boundary objects, boundary spanners can also contribute in the transfer of intellectual capital, which is the pivotal resource for boundary spanning in this field.

Traditional construction project practice has been based on rigid and impermeable boundaries that have made communication, cooperation and integration a major challenge. However, new collaborative approaches have been developed. This paper aims at adding to knowledge on projects‐as‐practice by interpreting findings from a case study on a contemporary collaborative construction project. The purpose of this paper is to provide knowledge about organizational development in the project‐based construction industry by identifying boundary actions in contemporary collaborative construction practices.

The paper is based on an exploratory longitudinal case study approach covering both early design phase and the following production phase, including interviews, participant observation at formal meetings and informal gatherings and internal and external documents. Thus, the methodology used is triangulation and the analysis has followed an interpretative process.

The paper provides empirical insights into three examples of boundary actions of a collaborative construction project: stakeholder boundary action, professional boundary action and geographical boundary action. From a project‐as‐practice perspective, these boundary actions turn out to be interesting renewal initiatives, providing increased understanding of where and how renewal can take place.

The findings are based on a single case study and more research on this area is needed. However, the paper shows examples of boundary actions in a contemporary project and thus adds to the knowledge on contemporary projects‐as‐practice.

The paper provides implications for construction project managers on examples of renewal arenas.

The paper is exploratory and the findings are important for much needed development and renewal of the construction industry.

Higher education research is replete with discussion of boundaries imagined as structural constraints in need of removal or circumvention. But, while foregrounding national–transnational frameworks, leadership strategising and institutional structures, the scholarship is subdued about how boundaries are actually dealt with at ground level. How do practitioners come together, day by day, across higher education boundaries; and what is required for desirable practices to be nurtured? It is on this issue, and in particular the theorisation of this issue, that this chapter will focus.

This chapter presents and develops a relational working framework, based on the work of Anne Edwards. We highlight three core concepts (common knowledge, relational expertise and relational agency), disaggregating each into constituent features. We then apply the framework to reinterpret previously published empirical studies, to demonstrate its broad applicability. We argue that the framework usefully conceptualises how practitioners work with others across boundaries; that it helps us to notice how many boundaries are, in fact, routinely permeated; and that it usefully highlights important aspects of local practices that are easily obscured.

This research paper aims to examine how open innovation (OI) intermediaries facilitate knowledge collaboration between organizations and online user communities. Drawing on a Community of Practice (CoP) perspective on knowledge, the study lays out a framework of the knowledge boundary management mechanisms (and associated practices) that intermediaries deploy in enabling client organizations to engage in online community-based OI.

This research is based on an exploratory case study of an OI intermediary and 18 client organizations that engage with online user communities on the intermediary’s platform. Results incorporate both the intermediary and clients’ perspective, based on analysis of intermediary and client interviews, clients’ online community projects and other archival data.

Results reveal that OI intermediaries deploy three knowledge boundary management mechanisms – syntactic, semantic and pragmatic – each underpinned by a set of practices. Together, these mechanisms enable knowledge transfer, translation and transformation, respectively, and thus lead to cumulatively richer knowledge collaboration outcomes at the organization–community boundary. The findings show that the pragmatic mechanism reinforces both semantic and syntactic mechanisms, and is hence the most critical to achieving effective knowledge collaboration in community-based OI settings.

The findings suggest that OI intermediaries have to implement all three boundary management mechanisms to successfully enable knowledge collaboration for community-based OI. More specifically, intermediaries need to expand their focus beyond the development of digital platforms, to include nuanced efforts at building organizational commitment to community engagement.

Drawing on the CoP view, this study integrates the knowledge management literature into the OI literature to conceptualize the role of OI intermediaries in shaping knowledge collaboration between organizations and communities. In engaging with the interactive nature of knowledge exchange in such multi-actor settings, this research extends the firm-centric theorization of knowledge that currently dominates the existing OI research.

The paper contributes to the debate on a general theory of markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop a market practice model based on social practice theories, and explore new ways of describing market boundaries.

A conceptual analysis of contemporary marketing directions and market theorizations provides a basis for defining markets and market boundaries in terms of social practices and their performances by market actors.

Based on the market performances held in place by institutional practices that define, contextualize and stabilize a market, this paper defines market boundaries by nine specific categories of practices, described here as parameters.

This is a conceptual paper. Future research using empirical evidence derived from situated investigations should endeavor to refine the model and practices that define market boundaries.

The paper provides a new conceptualization of markets and market boundaries from the social practice perspective, and advances contemporary market theorizing that puts services at the center of exchange. The paper offers managerial implications by describing alternative means for analyzing markets and developing corresponding competitive strategies. Furthermore, the conception of market boundaries as nine parameters provides insights beyond the geographic and price boundaries typically used to describe market limits and exchange processes when developing policy.