Configuring team boundary spanning for resilience

In this chapter, we will examine how organizational teams can engage in so-called “boundary spanning” activities to effectively deal with disruptions and ensure their organizations’ resilience. Boundary spanning refers to teams’ efforts to build and maintain work-related relationships with other teams inside and outside their organization. Such external team activities can be instrumental for acquiring the support, expertise, and information needed to spot early warning signals and develop effective countermeasures. At the same time, boundary spanning is difficult and labour-intensive. Therefore, this chapter focuses on how teams can most effectively configure their boundary spanning activities when dealing with disruptions. We will consider how teams need to distribute boundary spanning tasks among their members, which hierarchical levels must engage in boundary spanning, and for what purposes teams engage in boundary spanning over time, depending on the characteristics of disruptions they face. These insights help to rethink existing theory on boundary spanning and provide a fresh perspective on what organizations can do to manage disruptions effectively