Boundary spanning

Organisations risk becoming sealed off from the world they depend on. Boundary spanning is the work of connecting the inside to the outside, and one part of a firm to another.

Boundary spanning is the activity of linking an organisation, or a unit within it, to relevant information, people, and resources beyond its own boundaries. Those who do it, boundary spanners, connect the inside to the outside, or one part of an organisation to another, channelling knowledge across the divides that otherwise isolate groups.

Bridging the gaps

Organisations and the groups within them naturally develop boundaries, of function, location, expertise, and culture, that impede the flow of knowledge. Boundary spanning bridges these gaps. A boundary spanner might link a research team to developments in the wider scientific field, connect a firm to its customers' real needs, or join two departments that would otherwise work in ignorance of each other. By moving information and understanding across boundaries, boundary spanners counter the isolation that lets groups drift out of touch with their environment or with each other.

The boundary spanner's role

Effective boundary spanning depends on particular people and capabilities. Boundary spanners must understand both sides they connect well enough to translate between them, since groups separated by a boundary often differ in language, assumptions, and priorities. They scan the external environment for relevant knowledge, bring it in, and make it intelligible and usable internally, and they carry the organisation's needs and ideas outward. This translation role is demanding and easily undervalued, since its product, knowledge that flows where it would not otherwise, is hard to attribute to any individual.

Why it matters for adaptation

Boundary spanning is closely tied to an organisation's ability to learn and adapt. A firm that spans its boundaries well stays connected to changes in technology, markets, and ideas, feeding fresh knowledge into the organisation and countering the insularity that breeds obsolescence. One that spans poorly becomes sealed off, its internal consensus drifting away from external reality, vulnerable to being blindsided by developments it never registered. Absorptive capacity, the ability to recognise and use external knowledge, depends heavily on boundary spanning.

Boundary spanning is the connective tissue that keeps organisations linked to their environment and internally joined up. It is often performed by unsung individuals whose value lies precisely in their ability to reach across the divides that separate groups, and it is essential to any organisation that means to keep learning from a world beyond its own walls.