Changing practice through boundary organizing: A case from medical R&D

Abstract

This paper contributes to our understanding of practices in innovating organisations. Previous studies have demonstrated how breakthroughs in knowledge may fail to be translated into practices if they are not aligned with existing practices, or if they cut across established boundaries and power structures. By drawing upon an ethnographic study of a medical R&D department which has been highly successful in developing new medical practices this paper investigates how such challenges can be overcome. To date much of the literature has focused on coordination across single, well-defined boundaries. We here extend this focus and introduce the notion of 'boundary organising' to analyse highly political and contingent processes of innovation and change within and across different practices. We add to existing literature by highlighting how the handling of multiple boundaries, the indirect effects of boundary work, the negotiation of mutual benefits and interests, and mutual adaptation are key aspects of boundary organising.

Proceedings of the 3rd IPLeiria’s International Health Congress

“…Background Hybrid systems imply multi-tasking as in post Fordist lean production [1][2] and are relevant to complex organisations such as teaching hospitals [3]. Nonetheless, they raise questions concerning levels of leadership and responsibility [4], group working and relational coordination [5][6][7] across different domains of practice [8]. Moreover, there is a need to better understand how group operational effectiveness is associated with clarity of job roles [9], workloads and motivation [10] and their impact on the climate and quality of care [11].…”

“…Results The WLEIS-P applies to students has a good internal consistency with 16 items, α = 0.825, a 0.825 KMO, and a Bartlett's sphericity test of 3691.523 (p < 0.001). Using the Kaiser criterion, we obtained four factors that explain 61.52 % of the total variance: Factor 1-Selfemotional appraisal (items 1,2,3,4); Factor 2-Emotional appraisal of others (items 5,6,7,8); Factor 3 -Use of emotion (items 9,10,11,12) and Factor 4 -Regulation of emotion (items 13, 14, 15, 16). Conclusions WLEIS-P revealed an adequate factorial validity and reliability in the sample of health students, better than previous Portuguese validation, therefore it can be used to access Emotional Intelligence in Portuguese students.…”

Living Labs as boundary-spanners between Triple Helix actors

“…In this paper, we focus on the organization level with Living labs as temporary network organizations. With regard to position in the system, intermediaries or boundary-spanners might locate in-house at one of the actors, like transfer offices and R&D labs at university that undertake specific boundary-organization activity (Mørk et al, 2012). Or intermediaries are somewhere inbetween organizations and independent as a genuine 'third party'.…”

R&D CONSORTIA AS BOUNDARY ORGANISATIONS: MISALIGNMENT AND ASYMMETRY OF BOUNDARY MANAGEMENT

“…Such consortia therefore have to play the role of boundary organisations, i.e. entities that serve the interests of multiple partners and mediate complex boundary negotiations as part of their routine work (Guston, 1999(Guston, , 2001Mørk et al, 2008;Mørk et al, 2012).…”

“…Dealing with multiple boundaries has long been seen as an important part of successful R&D management (Organ and Greene, 1972), with a growing understanding that boundary processes are complex, evolving and contingent on multiple macro-and micro-level factors (Cilliers, 2001;Barrett et al, 2012;Mørk et al, 2012). Responding to the calls to combine macro-and micro-levels of theorising innovation (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010;Bromiley and Rau, 2014), we adopt the practice-based view to analyse the strategies of boundary management in multilateral R&D consortia.…”