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While there is anecdotal evidence that internationally mobile workers often form isolated nation-based communities or “expatriate bubbles,” previous academic scholarship on the expatriate communities and their subjective boundaries is limited. The primary purpose of this article is to advance the theoretical or conceptual understanding of expatriate communities as bubbles.

As developed by Lamont and Molnár (2002), the theory of symbolic boundaries is applied and set to scrutinize the production and maintenance of insulated expatriate communities. Empirically, an ethnographic study of a community of Finnish expatriates in a Southeast Asian country is undertaken to describe how symbolic boundaries are constructed.

The main theoretical implication of the paper is the recognition that expatriates themselves are involved in creating the “bubble.” The boundaries separating the national expatriate community are not externally imposed but can be viewed as consequences of the active boundary work of the expatriates. The empirical study demonstrates how the Finnish expatriates negotiated the symbolic boundaries of their community, drawing on cultural, moral and spatial modalities in different levels of boundary work.

There need to be more systematic attempts to develop a theoretically grounded understanding of insulated expatriate communities and their boundaries. This article contributes to the sociological conceptualization of expatriate bubbles by utilizing the symbolic boundary approach, which adds perspective to the embryonic theory of the subjective boundaries of expatriate communities. The multiplicity of different types of symbolic boundaries and their modalities suggests that an expatriate bubble is rarely a finished state or structure.

Throughout its history, information retrieval has struggled to handle contradictory needs of system oriented and user‐oriented research. Information retrieval has gradually, starting in the 1960s, moved toward handling the needs of the user. This paper aims to consider the way boundaries toward the user and user‐oriented perspectives are drawn, renegotiated and re‐drawn.

The central concept of relevance is seen as a boundary concept, complex and flexible, that is continuously redefined in order to manage boundaries. Five influential research papers from the 1960s and early 1970s are analysed in order to understand usage of the concept during a period when psychological and cognitive research tools began to be discussed as a possibility.

Relevance does not only carry an explanatory function, but also serves a purpose relating to the identity of the field. Key contributions on research on relevance seems to, as a by‐product, draw a boundary giving legitimacy to certain theoretical resources while demarcating against others. The strategies that are identified in the key texts are intent on finding, representing, justifying and strengthening a boundary that includes and excludes a reasonable amount of complexity associated with the user.

The paper explores a central concept within information retrieval and information science in a new way. It also supplies a fresh perspective on the development of information retrieval during the 1960s and 1970s.

In healthcare, organizational boundaries are often viewed as barriers to change. The purpose of this paper is to show how middle managers create inter-organizational change by doing boundary work: the dual act of redrawing boundaries and coordinating work in new ways.

Theoretically, the paper draws on the concept of boundary work from Science and Technology Studies. Empirically, the paper is based on an ethnographic investigation of middle managers that participate in a Dutch reform program across health, social care, and housing.

The findings show how middle managers create a sense of urgency for inter-organizational change by emphasizing “fragmented” service provision due to professional, sectoral, financial, and geographical boundaries. Rather than eradicating these boundaries, middle managers change the status quo gradually by redrawing composite boundaries. They use boundary objects and a boundary-transcending vocabulary emphasizing the need for societal gains that go beyond production targets of individual organizations. As a result, work is coordinated in new ways in neighborhood teams and professional expertise is being reconfigured.

Since boundary workers create incremental change, it is necessary to follow their work for a longer period to assess whether boundary work contributes to paradigm change.

Organizations should pay attention to conditions for boundary work, such as legitimacy of boundary workers and the availability of boundary spaces that function as communities of practice.

By shifting the focus from boundaries to boundary work, this paper gives valuable insights into “how” boundaries are redrawn and embodied in objects and language.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of culture in the relationship between boundary permeability and cooperation and work group identification. In addition, the levels of boundary permeability of Australians and Singaporeans are compared.

Survey questionnaires were administered to 134 employees (87 Singaporeans and 47 Australians) working in multinational corporations in both Australia and Singapore. Hierarchical moderated regression was used to test whether culture moderated the relationship between boundary permeability and cooperation and workgroup identification.

Results indicated that workplace boundary permeability was marginally and positively related to cooperation but not to workgroup identification. Further analysis revealed that culture moderated the relationships between workplace boundary permeability and cooperation and workgroup identification. Specifically, a stronger positive relationship was found between boundary permeability and these outcomes for Singaporeans as opposed to Australians.

Limitations include the relatively small sample size of both cultural groups; the behavioral measure used to assess cooperation; and the self‐reported nature of the data.

The findings of this study have important practical implications for managers working in multinational corporations who seek to promote cooperation and workgroup identification among culturally diverse employees.

Guided by social identity and cross‐cultural theories, this study highlights the role of culture in predicting the attitudinal consequences of boundary permeability.

This study explores the professional work of managers in professional service firms (PSFs) by focusing on the relational position of managers as they interface between diverse groups of actors and navigate a multiplicity of accountabilities.

Drawing on an ethnographic study of managers in a Brazilian PSF, this study demonstrates through observations, interviews and shadowing how PSF managers address multiple accountabilities in the conduct of professional work.

To navigate multiple accountabilities, PSF managers perform several forms of boundary work, which the authors conceptualize as “revamping” and “remolding” operations and “translating” and “transforming” understandings. The form of boundary work performed depends on the configuration of two elements of accountability demands: knowledge orientation and extent of exposure. Although analytically distinct, these elements intertwine, suggesting the need for a dynamic perspective on accountability. The analysis shows that professional work extends beyond fixed or passive views of hierarchical and intrinsic accountability to emphasize that managers exude accountability of an adaptive nature.

This study illustrates and theorizes the role of boundary work in PSFs, develops its link to accountability, and identifies its scholarly and practical affordances and limitations for understanding managers’ professional work when navigating multiple accountabilities.

The findings reveal perspectives and behaviors of managers embedded in PSFs, illustrating their unstructured and agentic experiences of accountability and boundary work in practice. The insights can be extended to other contexts where managers face multiple accountabilities in conducting professional work.

The theoretical conceptualization of boundaries is proposed as a useful approach to study diversity in organizations.

Two types of diversity in health-care organizations – functional diversity and social category diversity – are compared, drawing on two extensive studies of Israeli hospitals. One study addresses the boundary between the medical professions and complementary medicine and the other examines the boundary between Israel's Jewish ethnic majority and the Arab minority.

With regard to functional diversity, boundary-work is used to draw, redraw, and maintain the boundary between biomedicine professionals and complementary medicine practitioners. With respect to social category diversity, boundary-work is employed to blur the boundary between Jewish and Arab professionals working within the organization and the ideal of professionalism is used as a boundary object to blur this ethno-national boundary.

This typology is offered in the hope of providing greater theoretical insight into the study of organizational diversity in the context of power relations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate COVID-19 as a super crisis in the design and management of places.

This theory-driven work outlines why and how, by treating COVID-19 as a super crisis, the immunological view rises in priority and swiftly ushers in short- and long-term implications for space design and place management.

First, this paper looks at the short-term impact of COVID-19 upon space and place management in addressing how porous bubbling, stippling and flexible curtaining respond to immediate retrofitting needs during the pandemic. Using the concept of COVID-19-induced collective trauma, this paper draws attention to health-care facilities, schools, workplaces, commercial buildings and public outdoor spaces. These sites require short-term improvisation in place and space design and will, where the collective trauma of COVID-19 leaves strong traces, require long-term redesign and rethinking.

As a super crisis, COVID-19 generates contradictions in the existing trend in space and place studies from the notion of space and place as a container to one focusing on “flow.” A focus on flow highlights a focus on space and place as adaptable to changes in flow, especially as augmented and mediated by technology.

This treatment of COVID-19 as a super crisis is intended to stimulate the design and management of spaces and places in the post-COVID-19 period.

This paper aims to explore how music festival organisers negotiate diversity and inclusion in marketing and promotion practices through symbolic and social boundaries.

Based on semi-structured interviews with 18 festival organisers in Rotterdam and participant observation with six festival photographers I show that symbolic and social boundaries are employed in three areas: (1) boundaries in festival format (i.e. [partially] free or ticketed), (2) boundaries in distribution partners and technologies and (3) boundaries in promotional content.

Symbolic and social boundaries are intentionally used by festival organisers to build and delineate festival audiences. Implications are drawn on current understandings of the accessibility of music festival spaces, arguing that festival research should move beyond within-space dynamics to grasp the negotiation of diversity and inclusion at festivals more fully.

While music festivals are often marketed as celebratory spaces that are “welcoming to everyone”, few studies have investigated diversity and inclusion nor marketing and promotion practices at music festivals. This study shows how festival audiences are shaped through marketing and promotion practices.

This paper examines nationalism as a driver of political risk and how it can lead to supply chain disruptions for foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs).

Conceptual research based on a review of the literature on nationalism and supply chain risk management.

This research unveils how economic nationalism could engender supply chain disruptions via discriminatory practices toward all foreign MNEs and how national animosity may generate additional risks for the MNEs of nations in conflict with one another. These discriminatory practices include an array of host government and grassroots actions targeting foreign MNEs. While economic nationalism and national animosity emanate from within a host country, they may stimulate geopolitical crises outside the host country and thereby affect the international supply chains of foreign MNEs.

This research lays the foundation for analytical and empirical researchers to integrate key elements of nationalism into their studies and recommends propositions and datasets to study these notions.

This study shows the implications that nationalist drivers of supply chain disruptions have for foreign MNEs and thus can help managers to proactively mitigate such disruptions.

This study reveals the importance of integrating notions of national identity and national history in supply chain research, since they play a key role in the emergence of policies and events responsible for supply chain disruptions.