Against the background of principal-agent and transaction-cost theoretical considerations, this study addresses the question whether relational competencies relate to trust within cooperative relationships, taking into account also situational and personal factors. In its conclusion, the study presents an experimentally confirmed model (n = 282) that shows the strong causal relationship between relational competencies and trust allowing boundary-spanning agents to exert influence on the development and maintenance of complex cooperative relationships characterized by long-term objectives.

As public agencies have implemented programs to respond to natural disasters, alleviate poverty, provide food security, and address other wicked problems, the organizational structuring of public sector program management has changed in response. The federal agencies responsible for U.S. foreign policy, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have embraced multi-organizational, cross-sector network collaboration as part of their core missions. The strategic transition of USAID to an increased use of network models for program implementation raises questions concerning the ability of the agency, through its partners, to foster organizational learning in this network setting. Ensuring the ability to utilize knowledge and ways of knowing generated through program activity is a critical factor to sustaining the long-term capacity of government agencies and their partners to pursue solutions for these complex global problems. The research reported in this dissertation focuses on network administrative organizations (NAOs) delegated official responsibility for the management of government-funded multi-institutional programs, to understand how organizational learning for innovation takes place in an NAO-led network. This research explored the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Labs for Collaborative Research program focusing on two comparable case studies representative of NAO-led goal-directed networks, the Integrated Pest Management and Horticulture Innovation Labs. The Crossan et al. (1999) 4I framework on organizational learning served as the primary theoretical foundation for addressing how NAOs enable, manage, and leverage organizational learning associated with the boundary work of their program team representatives to innovate as networks. In the two cases studied, the findings indicated that learning practices flowed as anticipated within and across the program network for program and administrative related knowledge, but flowed in a number of different directions for knowledge related to addressing novel problems. Additionally, the NAOs' ability to institutionalize knowledge generated through the work of program teams and individual members followed unpredictable patterns and was influenced by the presence of knowledge and learning boundaries within the network. The research contribution includes a theorized two-part role for NAOs associated with managing situational learning on behalf of the network and a proposed expansion of the 4I framework that incorporates a network level of learning, organizational boundaries, and two new processes introduced as a result of the findings. Finally, the research concludes with a proposed a preliminary framework beneficial to NAO practitioners tasked with managing organizational learning in similar goal-directed network environments. / PHD

This study tested the existence of significant differences in levels of perceived job stressors between non-managerial individuals in boundary-spanning and nonboundary- spanning occupations. Correlations between selected demographic characteristics and levels of perceived job stressors were also determined.

In the service economy of the 21st century, companies face intense competition in providing customer-centric products and services. In an environment where emerging technologies constantly stimulate innovative methods of service delivery, customer and technological knowledge remain the primary types of information applied by a company in providing customers with quality products and services. Managing knowledge interactions for synergetic business operations is critical in building a service-oriented infrastructure for continuous innovation. This study explores the pattern of knowledge interaction between R&D and marketing departments. Knowledge possessed by R&D department is defined as technological knowledge, while knowledge possessed by marketing department is defined as customer knowledge. First, the concepts, theories, and relevant research regarding the relationship between customer and technological knowledge is reviewed. Based on boundary-spanning theory, this study conducts an exploratory case study to examine the interaction between customer and technological knowledge. The case study focuses on the interaction between sales personnel and R&D employees across three levels of interaction, the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. This study found that different types of knowledge and activities between R&D and marketing departments generate different results. This study also found that most business knowledge for innovation is generated at the knowledge interaction between semantic and pragmatic level. Another finding is that Field Application Engineers play the important roles of boundary spanner because they possess both technological knowledge and customer knowledge for their specialized field. Boundary spanners serve as both filters and facilitators in information transmittal between internal units, and play an important role in the transfer of ideas within organizations. To develop critical innovations, businesses should interact according to what type of knowledge accessed.

In this study I examine how management practices influence federal employee job satisfaction. I find that employee perception of team boundary spanning, organizational communication and demographic diversity has a sizable influence on job satisfaction. These interactions are moderated by perceptions of managerial trust. This analysis of 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) data suggests that managerial influence on job satisfaction can be more accurately measured by evaluating facets of management.

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This study examined how stigma and dialectical tensions affect information sharing by gay men. One specific area that was investigated is the use of interpersonal boundary spanning techniques in managing information related to being gay. The research used a qualitative, interpretive method to gather and analyze data from eleven in-depth interviews. An interview schedule was developed based on the critical incident technique in order to focus the interviews on specific events and direct observation. The questions in the interview covered individuals experiences with sharing their sexual orientation with someone else for the first time, times when they have specifically chosen to share or not share their orientation, boundaries that exist between the GLBT community and the larger community in which it resides, and techniques used when sharing general information about being gay. The data was analyzed for relational themes described by Owen (1984) as those that emerge through recurrence, repetition, and forcefulness. The themes that emerged were how stigma affects coming out both initially and continuously, managing stigma and dialectical tension, and techniques used in interpersonal boundary spanning. Two major contributions emerged: the relationship between stigma and intrapersonal dialectical tensions, and interpersonal boundary spanning. Stigma can change how easy it is to manage intrapersonal dialectical tensions, such as a normal-different tension. Interpersonal boundary spanning can help the stigmatized individual to demonstrate his normality, and interpersonal boundary spanning helps to reduce stereotyping and negative perception of the stigmatized group.

This paper explores the construct of Boundaries and Boundary Spanning in software development teams that consist of members located in both the U.S. and in India. Drawing on literature pertaining to boundaries in business, global boundaries, cultural boundaries, virtual team boundaries, and organizational boundaries, two studies were conducted. The first study measured the boundary spanning behaviors of software team managers of 25 teams. These results were analyzed in conjunction with a standard measure of software team output. No support was found for the hypothesis that frequency of team manager boundary spanning behavior had an impact on overall team output. In the second study, interviews were conducted of 20 software team managers to better understand their perceptions of the boundaries to team success. Managers cited several boundaries to team output, such as those of communication and issues of power-distance. Nearly all managers felt that time zone difference, a temporal boundary, was the most impactful to their own team success. Through flexible pattern matching analysis, categories of team boundaries have been proposed. / Business Administration/Management Information Systems

Research has shown that socially-focused partnerships that cross sectors (referred to as social partnerships within) are necessary in order to effectively address pressing societal issues such as poverty. Yet, in these complex organizational contexts, there is often variability within and between involved organizations as it relates to basic assumptions around work and the meanings given to practices at macro, meso and micro levels of analysis. Put differently, there are often a plurality of meaning systems at play in such multi-faceted organizational arrangements. Accordingly, the purpose of this dissertation was to understand to what extent multiple meaning systems exist in social partnerships focused on addressing multi-faceted societal challenges and, whether and how such differences in meaning systems are strategically negotiated over time. At a deeper theoretical level, this research was focused on illuminating the processes by which meaning systems are negotiated when organizational boundaries are blurred and when a plurality of meaning systems are at play, with a central focus on players that act as boundary spanners within these complex organizational contexts. To understand the complexities at play in social partnerships emanating from multiple meaning systems, I conducted a multi-site ethnographic study, involving in-depth interviews and participant observation, of the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness Society (Coalition) located in Victoria, British Columbia. In doing so, I utilized the principal literature streams that address multiple meaning systems at work: the culture literature in organization studies and the institutional logics perspective. As well, I incorporated other literatures based upon the emergent findings, namely organizational identity. Through this work I make a number of contributions within the area of sustainability, particularly the social partnership literature, as well as organizational theory. Empirically, I develop a process model that elucidates how players negotiate multiple meanings of organizational identity over time in a social partnership setting characterized by permeable boundaries and shared authority, at the group level of analysis. This is significant as we know little about how identity plays out in such multi-faceted organizational settings with continual blurred boundaries even as research has indicated that such arrangements are likely to surface identity issues among players (Maguire & Hardy, 2005). I also elucidate how individual players bridge across multiple meaning systems in a social partnership over time, answering the call for more research concerning the role of individuals and their interactions with organizations in the collaboration process over time (Manning & Roessler, 2014). To my knowledge, this work is one of the first of its kind to empirically explore tri-sector socially focused collaborations – involving players from the public, private and nonprofit sectors – that are more integrative and interconnected in nature (Austin & Seitanidi, 2012a) and that employs a process based perspective to understand how such collaborations unfold over time. In addition, I theoretically develop the link between institutional logics and organizational culture that emerged empirically via this study to guide future integrative work to holistically account for the multiplicity of meaning systems at work within and between such multi-faceted arrangements. / Graduate / 2020-04-01

­^¤åºK­n Today¡AIC products have become a essential in the human life. Take the daily life of Taiwan¡¦s people for example, people use the IC products in every minutes: mobile phone, credit card, health insurance card, etc. The competition between IC products also has been a vital war for the company to protect its market position. Time to market for the IC product has also become more and more important for the company to maintain or even survive. More powerful performance of the IC product rely on more professional marketing position forecast, innovated design and time to market manufacturing. To realize a IC product come from the manufacturing through the IC design house, foundry and the package. There should be with different expertise between the companies or inside the company. How to make sure with correct manufacturing through these expertise to meet the time-to-marketing challenge is very important, especially, right people in right position. What¡¦s the role-play for the people during the manufacturing between and within the company/groups will be the focus in this thesis. Take the example for a semiconductor manufacturing company, there are divided with different functions of department. Each department has its own knowledge-based function to maintain or develop the related knowledge for a IC manufacturing. People should do the knowledge transfer inside the department and, moreover, the related functions with other departments. How do improve the efficiency through the effective communication and knowledge sharing will be discussed. The main results of this thesis are as the below 1. There are with built-up boundary between different groups/department organization due to its different job functions and expertise. It will be resulted as the communication barrier or knowledge transfer problem between these groups/organization even their goal is the same. 2. 5 categories can be identified for these barriers on the knowledge transfer and communication between different expertises. 3. Defined SOP(standard operation procedure) to communicate through documents and intensive discussion meeting can be improved to effective for the knowledge transfer between different groups/department organization, especially for the fresh engineers. 4. The psychological factor of human between different groups/organization is found to be another issue to block the knowledge transfer. How to eliminate the factor can be next study focus.