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The purpose of this study is to analyze the connections between centrality within conflict networks, individual performance, and job satisfaction from the perspective of social networks. The intervening effects of task interdependency on these connections are also examined.

Using the social network survey approach, the empirical data from 310 engineers of a large R&D Institute affiliated with the Ministry of National Defense in Taiwan were collected.

The results show that centrality within relationship conflict networks was negatively related to individual performance and job satisfaction. However, centrality within task conflict networks was positively related to individual performance and job satisfaction Task interdependency mitigates the negative influence of relationship conflicts on individual performance and job satisfaction, and the positive influence of task conflict on job satisfaction.

As the evidence in this study came from the employees of one organization, future studies should corroborate findings by surveying more organizations.

The findings have important implications for individual social networks. Within the conflict network, people who occupy the central position of relationship conflict have a negative impact on performance and job satisfaction.

This study contributes to the literature on social networks and conflicts theory by demonstrating the concept of centrality within conflict networks. In addition, it also demonstrates that the centrality of conflict network is an important factor in influencing individual performance and job satisfaction.

One of the typical issues in supply chain management (SCM) implementation is how to capture the complexities of supply chains. This paper reviews the existing supply chain modelling methods, and identifies the limitations of current methods. Based on these, a novel co‐ordinated supply chain modelling approach is proposed to capture the complexity of supply chains from the views of scenario, interdependency, process and information. The proposed method is comprehensive, inclusive and aims to capture the complexities of a supply chain, align supply chain processes, and provide the basis for supply chain integration.

The purpose of this paper is to improve decision quality, and therefore project and portfolio success, by testing the influence of different visual representations of interdependency data in a simulated decision experiment. A network mapping approach to visualize project interdependencies is introduced and compared with matrix and tabular displays.

A simulated decision task in a controlled classroom setting tested five hypotheses though a sample of 480 experiments.

The type of data representation used is associated with differing levels of decision quality, and the use of network mapping displays is aligned with the best results.

The findings are limited as this experiment-based study presented a simplified decision scenario and involved students rather than practicing managers. The findings are best interpreted in combination with organization-based research.

The findings of this study suggest that visual data displays, particularly network mapping displays, can provide benefits and improve project portfolio decision quality. Managers may draw upon this study to design ways to include visual data representations in their project portfolio management decision processes.

This study uses experimentation to complement organization-based studies to better understand the influence of different methods of visualizing data and managing interdependencies between projects. This research provides an important contribution to meet the acknowledged need for better tools to understand and manage project interdependencies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational actors interpret and enact technology in cross-boundary work contexts during e-government implementation in a public organization in East Malaysia.

Case study methodology involving semi-structured interviews, unobtrusive observations, and archival records was utilized in the study. Interview subjects include management staff, general employees, and information technology (IT) specialists to provide rich descriptions of their work practice.

Three distinct contexts contribute to cross-boundary work practice in relation to IT use and non-use, namely, standardization (complete IT use), hybridization (partial IT use), and conventionalization (zero IT use). Technology enactment strategies such as acceptance, avoidance, adaptation, and configuration are employed depending on actors’ interpretation of technology complexity and task interdependency.

Early interventions could involve examining how and why employees accept or avoid technology as part of their work practice and how they switch between enactment strategies. Organizations could ensure better team support to capitalize on the robust social interaction in cross-boundary work contexts to develop greater synergy in technology improvisations.

The study extends the technology enactment perspective as it offers new meanings to structures of action by understanding the temporal agentic orientations and how these are constructed by cross-boundary work contexts. It also offers insight into how enactment strategies are developed according to the productive tensions that arise from the interplay of cognitive orientations.

The process approach to multi-level organizational behavior is based on the assumption that multi-level organizational behavior is processual in nature. This article defines group and organizational processes and their representation as process frameworks. Both functional and inclusional classes of levels exist, each of which has at least five categories of levels. All ten categories are special cases of process frameworks. This article provides examples of each category level, which it uses to illustrate new models of organizational work, extended models of interdependence, a new typology of theories based on their levels of processes, and a new tool for survey research called knobby analyses. After explaining the basic idea of knobby analysis, the article briefly describes the processual theory of the organizational hologram, the use of linear programming, and causal-chain analysis to provide multi-level explanations of employee opinion data. These ideas are embodied in conducting a strategic organizational diagnosis, which is the first stage of organizational design. Organizational design encompasses multiple stages, each of which itself involves multiple, multi-level phenomena and analyses. The basic point is that the processual nature of multi-level organizational phenomena gives more hope for improvements in theory building and their application if one uses the process approach rather than a variable approach.

As teams are built around specialized and different knowledge, they need to regulate their knowledge boundaries to exchange their specialized knowledge with other teams and to protect the value of such specialized knowledge. However, prior studies focus primarily on boundary spanning and imply that boundaries are obstacles to sharing knowledge. To fill this research gap, this study aims to indicate the importance of knowledge protection regulation, an activity that sets an adequate boundary for protecting knowledge, and investigate the factors that facilitate knowledge protection regulation and its consequences.

This study collected empirical data from 196 teams in seven organizations. Through a validation of the measurement model, data from 138 teams are used for further analysis. The hypotheses effects are assessed using a structural equation model.

The analysis results indicate that both task uncertainty and task interdependency enhance knowledge protection regulation in teams, and that information technology support moderates the relationship between task uncertainty and knowledge protection regulation. The results also indicate that knowledge protection regulation improves inter-team coordination and team performance.

This study focuses on knowledge protection regulation by adopting communication privacy management theory at the team level. The findings imply that boundary management is the process of communication and depends on the role the teams play in accomplishing their tasks. The findings also provide a new way to understand knowledge flow of the teams as well as the entire organization.

Last century, J.R. Galbraith discussed the relationship between the amount of information an organisation processes and its structure. J.D. Thompson discussed a related topic of task interdependence and coordination. Given that the processing and management of information is the basis of electronic commerce (EC), the fastest developing mode of conducting business today, it is apposite to ask how relevant Galbraith’s and Thompson’s theories are today. As organisations increase their offerings and influence to attain competitive advantage they become more complex. Both information technology (IT) and the theories of Galbraith and Thompson assist them to reduce that complexity.

In this paper, we offer insights that combine a network perspective of the multinational company (MNC) with an analysis of different types of interdependencies. We develop and illustrate our arguments with a company case (LIMO) and argue that types of interdependencies have consequences for the orchestration of MNC activities. The experience from LIMO suggests that extreme organizational designs, where orchestration is either purely local or mostly global, fail to capture the nuances necessary to ensure efficiency and profitability. The main theoretical contribution in this paper is to show that the search for orchestration through an organizational design must involve the combination of several perspectives of activity combinations and their interdependencies. Simply optimizing through a tight network or looking at the firm as a loose federation is too simple to understand the complex trade-off facing modern MNCs.

The purpose of this paper is to show how interdependencies are used to make the project selection and review more effective in project portfolio management. Managers need to make appropriate pre‐evaluation of disciplines before taking them into use, therefore it is useful to know how much interdependencies can increase the success rate of projects and how big is the resource reduction from the use of interdependencies. This paper is an excerpt of a larger interdependency survey.

A large‐scale survey is carried out in two countries – Estonia and Finland. A total of 288 responses were received.

People see only positive aspects in interdependencies, but this paper proves that it is not always so. It is found that companies which take the phenomenon into account are more successful. Contrary to the respondents' perception and prior literature, a higher need for resources is noticed among the users of interdependency. The results indicate homogeneity between managerial issues of interdependencies in small‐to‐large companies.

The main limitation comes from the sample, as findings from the sample countries and industries may limit generalizability.

Practitioners can expect a higher success rate and resource consumption from interdependencies. Managers from small‐to‐large companies can find size‐related peculiarities and practices for their daily managerial actions.

This paper provides empirical evidence for a less investigated, but emerging field of interdependencies. So far, mostly components of interdependency have been investigated in isolation. The paper highlights the behavior of success rate and resource consumption among the users/non‐users of interdependency, which to the author's knowledge has not been provided so far.

An organization can be understood as a knowledge network in which teams send and receive knowledge. Many studies have explored knowledge sharing across teams but did not consider the direction of knowledge flows (KF), specifically how the knowledge inflow (KIF) and knowledge outflow (KOF) can be induced and influence team activities differently. To fill this gap, this paper distinguishes between KIF and KOF, examines their antecedents and consequences and considers how KIF and KOF within a team moderate the relationship between antecedents and KF of a team.

This study used structural equation model analysis of a sample of 341 individuals within 73 teams from four companies.

The results suggest that IT support is essential because it influences both KIF and KOF. However, only KOF has a significant effect on team performance suggesting that ambidexterity is not always necessary. In promoting KOF, increasing task interdependency is also effective. The effect of IT support varies with the level of KIF diversity.

The findings emphasize the importance of distinguishing KOF from KIF in a team’s knowledge network under the theoretical lens of ambidexterity. Identifying how IT support influences KF and how these flows separately affect team performance can provide useful insights into managing and facilitating KF in an organization.