In response to increased turbulence of work environment, many firms have generated the new team like change management team, organizational culture team, organizational change team, and etc. These marginal teams have the common mission to buffer again ...
In response to increased turbulence of work environment, many firms have generated the new team like change management team, organizational culture team, organizational change team, and etc. These marginal teams have the common mission to buffer against environmental impacts. So these marginal teams have such different characteristics from general team-based restructuring for promoting team and organizational effectiveness. They deserve the academic and practical attention from the perspective of their activities focused more on inter-team than intra-team and the importance of organizational change in the firms.
The purpose of 1st study is to seek operating mechanism and success factors of the marginal teams drawing on team boundary activities. This study was progressed by combining Q methodology with Critical Incident Technique. A total 35 statements were selected as Q sample through reviewing the existing team boundary spanning literature and interviewing for the purpose of deriving the activities executed in marginal team from interviews. P sample consisted of 21 senior employees in the marginal team from Korean firms, which refers to the participants in the Q study. After administering the Q sort (rank ordering of 35 statements), we conducted factor analysis and interpreted why and how the behaviors related the statements are carried out by the focal teams.
This research discovered three factors in boundary activities. Factor 1 is the Translator style that emphasized the function as audit or police which detects and improves the problems in the firm. Translator style was intended to understand the opinions of top management and simply execute following those. They believed that the problem solving activities could forge organizational performance in short term. However, the activities limited to intrateam without interteam approach would cultivate commitment to not novel task but common task.
Factor 2 is the Entrepreneur Style that has concerns about interteam renewal. They managed to develop new values or new opportunities rather than negative problems in interteam boundaries. Beyond resolving the problems in boundaries, this style encouraged employees to create new identities by transforming the boundaries. The significant antecedent for success in this style was creating shared vision that could loosen rigid borders between teams.
Factor 3 is the Negotiator Style that regards connection and coordination between teams. Both Entrepreneur style and Negotiator style tried commonly to search information and build cooperative relationship on interteam boundaries. By the way, Entrepreneur style concentrated to create new opportunity but Negotiator style focused on solving the existing problem collectively. The former could transform interteam boundaries but the latter was inclinable to maintain them. When Negotiator style was successful, the existing intractable problems may be resolved between teams. It was most important for success in this style that an amicable settlement must be reached.
Regarding boundary spanning activities in the marginal team context, our findings suggested herein three distinctive style and each success elements. They could contribute not only to broaden our understanding the role and success of the marginal team but also to help organizations to achieve organizational adaptability in changing business environment. Furthermore limitations and propositions for further research on boundary spanning activities of the marginal team are discussed.
2nd study was carried out with the purpose of identifying the identity and importance of the boundary-spanning activity of the marginal organizations. The marginal organizations play a role in absorbing the impact of the external environment in response to changes in the environment surrounding the organization, thereby protecting the core parts of the organization from operating efficiently. The purpose of this study is to identify the influences of leadership and the factors influencing these relationships, which determine the outcome of the marginal organization to cope with the external environment such as the change management team, organizational culture team and etc. derived from the 1st year's research. Based on the interviews with the organizational members' behavior in the marginal organization, the content analysis revealed the influence of the marginal organization members on the change self-efficacy, extra-role behavior, and absorptive capacity. In addition, the boundary-spanning leadership as a team level variable, which has an overall effect on three individual level variables, was included in the research model.
The data of the analysis are composed of 862 team members of the 137 marginal teams of the enterprises. The change self-efficacy has a positive effect on extra-role behaviors, and extra-role behaviors also have a significant effect on absorption capacity. The confidence in the ability to control and manage organizational change can be interpreted as a motive to increase acceptance of change and to voluntarily perform additional activities beyond the existing roles. In this way, these extra-role behaviors above the existing role of appropriately responding to the reactions of others and obtaining support from others and creating a climate that makes their work look better than they actually are can be achieved through the absorption of new knowledge and restructuring the organizational resources. This can be seen as the same concept as the absorptive capacity of acquiring and selectively acquiring new knowledge required for value creation and linking it to performance using absorbed knowledge. In addition, the team level boundary-spanning leadership has positive effects on three individual level variables, which are change self-efficacy, extra-role behaviors, and absorptive capacity. This results are consistent with those of previous studies that boundary-spanning leadership has a positive effect on the employee’s organizational orientation, alignment, and commitment.
The successful operating mechanism of the marginal organization revealed in this study suggested important implications for enhancing the effectiveness of the teams dedicated to the deterministic environmental factors. In particular, since the academic approach in connection with boundary-spanning leadership is insufficient, the measurement tools used in this study will contribute to the activation of future research. This study was conducted to analyze the reliability and validity of the measurement tools of boundary-spanning leadership proposed by the Center for Creative Leadership in order to adapt to Korean situation through translation and back-translation. The tools will be meaningful that domestic researchers establish a basis for quantitative measurement in order to study boundary-spanning leadership.