The Source of Innovation: Boundary Spanner

Abstract

There appears to be a consensus that organizational integration across functional and disciplinary specialties drives superior firm capabilities. The basic assumption is that new practices and concepts emerge from the interaction of individuals engaged in different functional departments. However, communication across functional boundaries is often difficult. As such, Tushman & Scanlan suggested that functional boundaries can be spanned effectively only by boundary spanners who understand the coding schemes that are attuned to the contextual information on both sides of the boundary. The study of boundary spanners has significant performance implications to firms. Compared to its importance, theoretical development and empirical inquiries into this phenomenon are relatively scant. Thus, this study explores the factors that determine who becomes a boundary spanner and examines boundary spanners' performance implications. A Taiwanese company provided the context for our study. Partial Least Squares (PLS) was used to test the theoretical model. The results imply that a company needs to have an appropriate mixture of boundary spanners and non-boundary spanners, because boundary spanners have higher innovative performance.

Keywords:

• Boundary spanners
• PLS
• social network analysis

Notes

1. PLS requires a minimum sample size that equals 10 times the greater of (1) the indicators on the most complex formative construct or (2) the largest number of antecedent constructs leading an endogenous construct.