Recently, growing interests in open innovation and interdisciplinary R&D have drawn increasing attention to boundaries and their impact on the innovative culture or capabilities of organizations. Boundary spanning is concerned with discovering internal or external information and then creating networks that connect the environment and the organization. To fulfill this role, they are usually aware of the contextual conditions on both sides of the border and can control the situation in the company.
It is not counterintuitive that boundary stretching is associated with research activities, as they aim to exploit diverse expertise and insights. Our research model posits connections between vertical and horizontal boundaries within an organization, organizational combinatorial capabilities, and bidirectionality. We expect that this study will provide a better understanding of the dynamic mechanism of boundary expansion and the role of innovation leaders, as well as insight into the questions: what is the bottleneck in the innovation process of our company.
Thus, the main purpose of this research is to examine whether organizational performance changes as a result of boundary spanning roles, which may be influenced by unit diversity and empowerment. After checking the construct and content validity as well as the reliability of the instruments, we used PLS (partial least squares regression) analysis to find the relationships between the variables.
INTRODUCTION
PRIOR WORK
- Boundary spanning roles
- Ambidexterity
- Empowerment inside organization
- Diversity inside organization
Adams (1976) addressed five types of boundary-spanning activities as: filtering, transaction, storage, representation, and protection. When boundary-spanning roles are assigned to several people, it would yield better results than when one person is tasked with the role. There are studies proving that boundary-spanning roles can promote role overload (Aldrich and Herker, 1977, Marrone et al., 2007).
The individual limit at the level of the individual brings a lot of pressure and demands on the one who charged. A single person tasked with the boundary-setting role should invest considerable effort and time compared to other members within the unit (Beehr et al., 1976, Marrone et al., 2007). Ambidexterity is located between the boundary and organizational performance and plays a mediating role in our model.
Firms tend to gain competitive advantages through the establishment and shielding of expertise from existing knowledge (March et al., 1958). It provides a memory for dealing with routine situations (Van Den Bosch et al., 1999) including formalization and routinization. It also refers to organizational structures, which can establish clear vision and objective (Seibert et al., 2004).
This characteristic of diversity depends on their race, gender and so on (Jackson, 1992, Pelled et al., 1999). However, some are concerned that demographic diversity could be problematic as it could be conceptualized as separation, diversity and disparity (Priem et al., 1999). Although functional diversity is less visible than demographic diversity, units that have functional diversity may have a wide range of task-relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities (Daan & Carsten, 2004). According to Ancona and Caldwell (1992), functional diversity enhances technical innovation and performance through communication with an external source.
Although there are some studies that suggest that functional diversity can negatively affect a firm's beneficial effect, we consider this construct as one variable, which maximizes capabilities or boundary-spanning roles.
RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESES
While most researchers measure organizational performance through financial results, we measure this construct through perceived performance. Because our analysis is at the team level, it is difficult to measure financial performance such as ROI and revenue growth. This person must move a project forward by scanning both inside and outside the boundaries.
To cover a wide range of environments from internal to external, the role of the boundary switch must have power, which allows them to freely convert their ideas into action. Empowerment is necessary to understand organizational circumstances, which use specific resources or are influenced by certain leaders. In our research, we find that empowerment is indirectly related to organizational performance, while it is positively influenced by boundary spanning.
This is because new and novel ideas can be easily accepted by different members, while uniform compositions of members can create difficulties in the process of identifying opportunities from new knowledge and exploiting them. Demographic diversity deals with gender, ethnicity, and age, while functional diversity deals with task-related knowledge, skills, and abilities (Daan & Carsten, 2004). Thus, the idea arose that diversity would have an effect in relation to boundary spanning.
Therefore, diversity is likely to moderate the degree of influence between the boundary-spanning roles and the organizational ambiguity. After obtaining the result, we combine the latent variable scores of exploration and exploitation to get a score of ambiguity. Accordingly, hypothesis 6a and 6b are defined as both exploitation and exploration will positively influence organizational performance.
RESEARCH METHOD
Study design and Data collection
Measures
Data analysis
Reflective indicators indicate a construct where the observable items are expressed as a function of the construct (Bontis, 1998). In the case of the questionnaire for EXI1, which reads: “My team's main customers are in similar sectors”, it seems inappropriate for our entire context. According to Harman's single-factor test, common method variance occurs when a single factor accounts for the majority of the covariance in the dependent and independent variables.
An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of all our items shows five factors that explain 60.12% of the variance in our research construct (see Table 3). We found that the first factor explains 29.5% and the last factor explains 5.42% of the total variance. Since we did not find one factor explaining the majority of the covariance, we confirmed that common method variance was not a problem in our research.
We found that there were no significant differences between early respondents and late respondents, so the results are understandable for the target group. Examination of construct reliability, discriminant validity and convergent validity PLS assesses the measurement model. Figures 2 and 3 show the results of the measurement. The results between 'diversity of unity and boundary tension' and 'empowerment and boundary tension' are the same, while other paths show different results due to ambidexterity.
Even if the Cronbach's alpha value of a construct remains 0.66, which is below the recommended point (0.7), the composite reliability results clarified the recommended value of 0.7 (Chin, 1998). In other words, the average variance extracted which indicates that each construct explains more than 50% of the variance. Since all items load from 0.73 to 0.92, we can say that the results support convergent validity without any exception.
This figure shows the results of combining the results of the latent variables (utilization & exploration) of the constructs.
Structural model
Control variable analysis
RESULTS
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATION
The pursuit of boundary-spanning roles and ambiguity are associated with the activities, which look for new opportunities within a dynamic environment. Nowadays, open innovation is inevitable to gain competitive advantage, so the role of boundary spanning and ambiguity is becoming more and more important. Based on this idea, we hypothesized that if there is a high level of boundary-spanning roles, ambiguity can have a positive impact on organizational performance.
Results from our study indicated that unit diversity was not significantly related to boundary-spanning roles. KENNEDY Duncan (1976), ¡®Form and Substance in Private Law Judgment¡¯. The Design of Organizations, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich New York. Demonstrating competence spanning boundaries in practice:. implications for the implementation and use of information systems.
이번 2년은 제 인생에서 가장 소중한 추억으로 남을 것 같아요. 항상 물질적으로나 정신적으로나 도움을 주시고 응원해주시는 세계 최고의 남자우한균 교수님을 만나서 정말 많은 것을 배웠습니다. 그리고 논문이 더 나은 길로 갈 수 있도록 아낌없이 조언을 해주신 정윤혁 교수님, 피부처럼 따뜻한 마음을 갖고 계신 조우재 교수님에게도 감사의 말씀을 전하고 싶습니다.
비록 짧은 시간이었지만 따뜻한 마음으로 대해주신 박재홍 교수님이 그리워요. 새로운 도전의 밑거름을 제공해 주신 김령은 교수님, 논문을 도와주신 이성희 교수님, 그리고 많은 학과 교수님들 덕분에 UNIST에서 많은 것을 배우고 성숙할 수 있었습니다. 테크노-영어. 많이 두려웠지만 벌써 졸업이 다가오고 있어서 웃고 즐기며 행복한 시간을 보내고 있었습니다.
가족들은 항상 나에게 무조건적인 사랑을 주시고 막내인데도 항상 감사한 마음을 갖고 있다. 당신의 밝은 앞날을 늘 기도하겠습니다. 그리고 도전을 두려워하지 않는 윤영심이 되겠습니다.
