Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti

Theoretical background
of interdependence between the two (Marrone, 2010). Finally, earlier
literature has acknowledged the need to guard and protect organizations, or
in other words buffer organizational boundaries (e.g. Ancona & Caldwell,
1988, 1992a, 1992b; Cross et al., 2000). A further distinction can be made
between controlling inputs and outputs (Jemison, 1984). Ancona and
Caldwell (1988) distinguish between guard activities that aim to avoid
releasing information outwards from the focal organization, and sentry
activities that are about controlling the inward flows to protect the
organization from external pressures.
The studies listed in Table 7 show how organizations such as project
teams simultaneously engage in many kinds of boundary activities.
Research by Ancona and Caldwell (Ancona, 1990; Ancona and Caldwell,
1992a) has shown how teams demonstrate different strategies for
approaching the environment, and how some strategies may be more
successful than others. In a study of 45 product development teams,
Ancona and Caldwell (1992a) found how a comprehensive strategy,
including a wide variety of boundary activities, was the only one positively
related to performance over time, measured by achieving budget and
schedule objectives and the team’s long-term innovativeness. More limited
strategies, such as those focusing on technical scouting or isolating the team
from its environment, indicated poor performance over time. Although
opening up the team’s boundary may also have negative impacts on the
team in terms of taking up time and energy from internal activities
(Ancona, 1990; Choi, 2002), frequent external activity has generally been
linked with higher performance (e.g. Ancona, 1990; Dollinger, 1984). For
example, Ancona and Caldwell (1992b) showed that top managers are more
likely to rate a team’s performance as high if the team has actively engaged
in external communication. Still, previous research has suggested that too
much focus on external activities may threaten a group’s or a team’s
existence by dissolving its boundary (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992a; Choi,
2002).
Different types of boundary activities are related to each other (Ancona &
Caldwell, 1988), and also to the team’s internal activities (Choi, 2002;
Drach-Zahavy & Somech, 2010). Druskat and Wheeler (2003) examined
boundary activities of external leaders of work teams and found relations
between boundary spanning behaviors. For example, scouting information
within the team concerning a problematic issue may enable the leader to
collect additional information on the issue from the larger organization, to
seek external resources to help solve the problem, and to intervene to
influence the team’s response to the problem. Ancona (1990) has also
emphasized how a team’s interaction with its environment is two-
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