Working at the boundary
Making space for innovation in a Nasa megaproject
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11924036 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Renee Rottner (0000-0002-6420-3961, University of California, Santa Barbara, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 403-431 |
| Publication date | 2019-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Studies of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0306-3127 • E-ISSN: 1460-3659 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0306312719851557 |
| PMID | 31185874 |
| OpenAlex | W2950879357 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 54 |
This study shows how occupational, organizational and institutional boundaries can be reworked to enable innovation. Based on an historical case study of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which spanned three decades and two dozen organizations, I show how megaproject members made boundaries a target of strategic action. Megaprojects, in particular, require us to think about boundaries at multiple levels as they commonly draw on expertise and resources from different disciplines, organizations, and institutional domains. This case reveals several mechanisms by which boundaries can be modified to coordinate diverse innovation partners, from reconfiguring the ways members relate to one another (splicing, fitting and channeling) to reshaping the environment they work in (softening, fusing and corralling). Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of how actors make room for new ideas and cause institutional change as part of innovation processes. By treating boundaries as malleable and multiplex, I extend organizational theory, which tends to view boundaries as given and things to be spanned. I extend the STS literature that takes boundaries as fluid, identifying several mechanisms of making and unmaking them. A more dynamic treatment of boundaries is called for in both innovation research and practice, and this study opens a path for research that looks not only at boundary objects but also boundary actions, and moves from boundary organizations to boundary organizing
Boundary (topology · Boundary object · Boundary spanning · Boundary-work · Economics · Epistemology · Knowledge management · Management · Megaproject · Negotiation · Social science · Sociology · Complex Systems and Decision Making · Computer Science · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Innovation and Knowledge Management
Science in action
Project-Based Organizing and Strategic Management
Open Innovation
The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers
Life in the Trading Zone
Organizational Boundaries and Theories of Organization
Leveraging External Sources of Innovation
A Pragmatic View of Knowledge and Boundaries
Boundary Spanning Individuals
Building Process Theory with Narrative
Transferring, Translating, and Transforming
Strategies for Theorizing from Process Data
Trading with the Enemy
From Pabst to Pepsi
Sorting Things Out
The Oxford Handbook of Innovation
Seeing like a Rover
Institutional Ecology, `Translations' and Boundary Objects
Stabilizing the Boundary between US Politics and Science
The logic of domains
The Rôle of the Organization in the Production of Techno-Scientific Knowledge
Social Boundary Mechanisms
Knowledge Practices in Design
Extra-terra incognita
This is Not a Boundary Object
Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science
Situating Technoscience
The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences
The Oncomouse That Roared
Object Lessons
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2024 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |