scholarly journals Transformational Ability of Energy Network Companies: The Role of Institutional Logics and Boundary Spanners

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 13582
Author(s):  
Larissa Shnayder ◽  
Hans van Kranenburg ◽  
Sjors Witjes
Keyword(s):  
Energy Transition ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Boundary Spanning ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Boundary Spanners ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Organizational Boundary ◽  
Energy Transitions ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Energy Network

Energy network companies play a vital role in energy transitions. The transformational ability of these companies influences the process of energy transitions and the effectiveness of policies in this domain. This study shows the need for managers of network companies as well as scholars and policy makers operating in the midst of energy transitions to acknowledge the importance and value of boundary spanners in improving the transformation ability of these companies to play their role in facilitating energy transitions. Evidence comes from an in-depth analysis of an energy network company in the Netherlands. Our findings show that the transformation ability of energy network companies depends on various instances of boundary spanning as these organizations address differing or conflicting intra- and inter-organizational institutional logics when contributing to an energy transition. In the context of energy transitions, inter-organizational boundary spanning generally demands more resources and attention than the spanning of intra-organizational boundaries. Additionally, intra-organizational boundaries affect inter-organizational relationships, particularly in the policy arena. Our findings indicate that to carry out the type of institutional change that an energy transition requires, more attention and resources should be dedicated to intra-organizational boundary spanning, even as the need to connect external stakeholders increases.

scholarly journals The activities of the organizational boundary spanners during the Covid19 pandemic: the case of a profit organization

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-346
Author(s):  
Concetta Tino
Keyword(s):  
Sono State ◽  
Boundary Spanning ◽  
Production Performance ◽  
Boundary Spanners ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Organizational Boundary ◽  
Emotional Dimension ◽  
Perceived Effects ◽  
Different Levels

In the first period of emergency from Covid19, only workplace organizations with essential production activities were able to continue to carry out their work. This required them the implementation of organizational strategies useful to contrast the risk of the pandemic and to protect production performance. The qualitative study conducted in a Lombard company, through semi-structured interviews, aimed at figures with different levels of responsibility, wanted to investigate: (i) which boundary spanning activities were used to manage the emergency? (ii) what factors allowed the effectiveness of the result in terms of contrasting the pandemic and guaranteeing the productivity (iii), what were the perceived effects on the company? Findings highlight the importance of the activities of organizational boundary spanners in emergency management and of those factors that, by supporting the socio-emotional dimension, have determined the organization’s productive advantage.   Le attività dei boundary spanners organizzativi durante la pandemia da Covid19: il caso di un’organizzazione profit.   Nel primo periodo della diffusione dell’emergenza sanitaria da Covid19, solo le organizzazioni lavorative con attività produttive essenziali hanno potuto continuare a svolgere il loro lavoro. Questo ha richiesto loro la messa in atto di strategie organizzative utili a contrastare il rischio della diffusione della pandemia e a salvaguardare la performance produttiva. Lo studio qualitativo condotto, in un’organizzazione profit lombarda, tramite interviste semistrutturate, rivolte a figure con diversi livelli di responsabilità ha voluto investigare: (i) quali attività di boundary spanning sono state utilizzate per gestire l’emergenza? (ii) quali fattori hanno consentito l’efficacia di risultato in termini di contrasto alla pandemia e di garanzia produttività (iii), quali sono state le ricadute percepite sull’organizzazione? I risultati ottenuti evidenziano l’importanza delle attività dei boundary spanners organizzativi nella gestione dell’emergenza e di quei fattori che sostenendo la dimensione socio-emozionale ne hanno determinano il vantaggio produttivo dell’organizzazione.

scholarly journals Legitimating power: Solar energy rollout, sustainability metrics and transition politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110249
Author(s):  
Siddharth Sareen
Keyword(s):  
Solar Energy ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Solar Irradiation ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Sustainability Metrics ◽  
Energy Transitions

Increasing recognition of the irrefutable urgency to address the global climate challenge is driving mitigation efforts to decarbonise. Countries are setting targets, technological innovation is making renewable energy sources competitive and fossil fuel actors are leveraging their incumbent privilege and political reach to modulate energy transitions. As techno-economic competitiveness is rapidly reconfigured in favour of sources such as solar energy, governance puzzles dominate the research frontier. Who makes key decisions about decarbonisation based on what metrics, and how are consequent benefits and burdens allocated? This article takes its point of departure in ambitious sustainability metrics for solar rollout that Portugal embraced in the late 2010s. This southwestern European country leads on hydro and wind power, and recently emerged from austerity politics after the 2008–2015 recession. Despite Europe’s best solar irradiation, its big solar push only kicked off in late 2018. In explaining how this arose and unfolded until mid-2020 and why, the article investigates what key issues ambitious rapid decarbonisation plans must address to enhance social equity. It combines attention to accountability and legitimacy to offer an analytical framework geared at generating actionable knowledge to advance an accountable energy transition. Drawing on empirical study of the contingencies that determine the implementation of sustainability metrics, the article traces how discrete acts legitimate specific trajectories of territorialisation by solar photovoltaics through discursive, bureaucratic, technocratic and financial practices. Combining empirics and perspectives from political ecology and energy geographies, it probes the politics of just energy transitions to more low-carbon and equitable societal futures.

scholarly journals Time to dismiss the idea of a structural fix within government? An analysis of intersectoral action for health in Danish municipalities

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (22_suppl) ◽  
pp. 48-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ditte H. Holt ◽  
Gemma Carey ◽  
Morten H. Rod
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Boundary Spanning ◽  
Governance Structures ◽  
Intersectoral Action ◽  
Structural Reorganization ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Public Health Action ◽  
Process Consulting ◽  
Health Action

Aims: This paper examines the role of organizational structure within government(s) in attempts to implement intersectoral action for health in Danish municipalities. We discuss the implications of structural reorganization and the governance structures that are established in order to ensure coordination and integration between policy sectors. Methods: The paper is based on 49 interviews with civil servants from health and non-health sectors of 10 municipalities. Based on participants’ experiences, cases have been described and analyzed in an iterative process consulting the literature on Health in All Policies and joined-up government. Results: Continuous and frequent processes of reorganizing were widespread in the municipalities. However, they appeared to have little effect on policy change. The two most common governance structures established to transcend organizational boundaries were the central unit and the intersectoral committee. According to the experiences of participants, paradoxically both of these organizational solutions tend to reproduce the organizational problems they are intended to overcome. Even if structural reorganization may succeed in dissolving some sector boundaries, it will inevitably create new ones. Conclusions: It is time to dismiss the idea that intersectoral action for health can be achieved by means of a structural fix. Rather than rearranging organizational boundaries it may be more useful to seek to manage the silos which exist in any organization, e.g. by promoting awareness of their implications for public health action and by enhancing the boundary spanning skills of public health officers.

scholarly journals Boundary Spanning Roles and Power in Educational Partnerships

AERA Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 233285842110168
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Wegemer ◽  
Jennifer R. Renick
Keyword(s):  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Boundary Spanning ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Task Orientation ◽  
Boundary Spanners ◽  
Educational Partnerships ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Reflexive Analysis

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) offer promising approaches to improve educational outcomes. Navigating boundaries between contexts is essential for RPP effectiveness, yet much work remains to establish a conceptual framework of boundary spanning in partnerships. Our longitudinal comparative case study draws from our experiences as graduate student boundary spanners in three long-term partnerships to examine boundary spanning roles in RPPs, with particular attention to the ways in which power permeates partnership work. Using qualitative, critically reflexive analysis of meeting artifacts and field notes, we found that our boundary spanning roles varied along five spectrums: institutional focus, task orientation, expertise, partnership disposition, and agency. Our roles were shaped by the organizational, cultural, relational, and historical features of the partnerships and contexts of interaction. We aim to promote the development of effective RPP strategies by leveraging the perspectives and positionality of graduate students in order to advance understanding of boundary spanning roles.

The “laborless fuel”: Landscape, energy transitions and natural gas in the postwar U.S.

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862098712
Author(s):  
Carlo Sica
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Business Owners ◽  
Energy Landscapes ◽  
Technological Systems ◽  
Energy Transitions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Landscapes

The dire need for an energy transition to mitigate and reverse global warming is inspiring scholars to reexamine political influences on technological systems. The multi-level perspective of the socio-technical transitions framework acknowledges how technological systems are affected by the social and political landscapes where they are built. Energy landscapes literatures elaborate on the socio-technical transitions framework by explaining how the boundaries of landscapes are negotiated in the context of energy transitions. Energy scholars have found that negotiations over the form and purpose of energy landscapes frequently skew in favor of capital accumulation instead of social reproduction. Studies of landscapes in human geography and labor history have shown how the power imbalance energy scholars observed can be corrected by workers and their communities struggling against business owners and the state. Using archival data, I show how U.S. natural gas legislation in the postwar period was intended to limit coalminers’ demands for landscapes of social reproduction. This point matters because the vulnerabilities of industrial capitalism to energy worker organization could be exploited to push for a just and sustainable energy transition like the Green New Deal.

Forging connections: The role of ‘boundary spanners’ in globalising clusters and shaping cluster evolution

2021 ◽  
pp. 030913252110387
Author(s):  
Di Wu
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Spanning ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Boundary Spanners ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Boundary Spanner ◽  
Evolutionary Economic ◽  
Cluster Evolution ◽  
Global Connections

Synthesising the endogenous-centred evolutionary economic geography perspective, and the globally oriented ‘global pipelines’ and global production networks frameworks, this article develops the ‘boundary spanner’ concept to propose a theoretical framework to illustrate how resourceful actors, as boundary spanners, globalise clusters and in turn drive cluster evolution. This framework comprises four interrelated cluster boundary-spanning functions, namely, discursive construction, innovation promotion, production coordination and market reach. This article aims to advance the cluster literature by unpacking how clusters’ global connections are constructed and maintained, conceptualising the multidimensional role of the agency of boundary spanners and demonstrating boundary spanners’ contributions to cluster evolution.

The Roles of Peripheral Participants and Brokers

2011 ◽  
pp. 297-307
Author(s):  
François Grima ◽  
Emmanuel Josserand
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Direct Observation ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Boundary Spanning ◽  
Boundary Spanners ◽  
Learning Trajectories ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
External Community ◽  
Do So

The objective of our chapter is to gain a better understanding of learning trajectories connecting external and internal communities of practices. To do so we studied four internal communities of practice by actors belonging to a same external community. We realized semi-directive interviews in these communities supplemented by direct observation of meetings. Our results give a new perspective on participation to communities of practice. We describe how young members act as boundary spanners between the communities and the practice in their organization while more senior members act as unique facilitators with a balance between boundary spanning and buffering. We describe in detail the personal characteristics of these senior members.

Symbolic Management beyond the Firm Level

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
James Westphal ◽  
Sun Hyun Park
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Management Support ◽  
Corporate Leadership ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Symbolic Management ◽  
Leadership Strategy ◽  
The Social

We describe forms of symbolic management that cross organizational boundaries, including symbolic management by firm leaders about the leadership, strategy, and governance of particular other firms, and symbolic management by and for larger groups of leaders and their firms. We suggest how such “symbolic management support” not only has a significant impact on how constituents evaluate particular firms and their leaders, but over an extended period of time it has had a deeper influence on the normative assumptions of journalists and analysts about leadership and governance, contributing to a historical shift in the institutional logics of governance. Finally, we reveal how firm leaders have engaged in symbolic management about the social structure of corporate leadership elite as a community and how these communications have contributed to a growing decoupling between the social structure of corporate leadership as it appears to constituents, and the actual social networks of firm leaders.

Third-country nationals as intercultural boundary spanners in multinational corporations

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-547
Author(s):  
Christoph Barmeyer ◽  
Volker Stein ◽  
Jenny Marie Eberhardt
Keyword(s):  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Boundary Spanning ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Boundary Spanners ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Intercultural Management ◽  
Third Country Nationals

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the central roles, functions and competences of third-country nationals (TCNs) in intercultural boundary spanning in multinational corporations (MNCs): Why are TCNs particularly important for reducing complexity at the overlapping functional, geographic and external boundaries of MNCs with their related interferences and which role do they play as boundary spanners in cross-boundary collaboration? Design/methodology/approach After introducing the theoretical background on boundary spanning and TCNs, the methodology applied in this paper is a theory-driven, qualitative approach based on 13 in-depth semi-structured interviews with TNCs conducted in 10 MNCs. Findings The authors aggregate TCNs’ activities into four roles: disembedded cosmopolitan, intermediary, third party and team-related boundary spanner. They show that TCNs tend to understand the complex intercultural context between headquarters and subsidiaries, balance power asymmetries, use their in-between neutrality to create trust, and act in an interculturally highly competent way by using a great variety of intercultural and linguistic skills. The TCNs’ meta-competence permits a higher level, intellectual and abstract perspective, enabling TCNs to consider structures, objects and interactions from an affective distance. Research limitations/implications The differences between TCNs and “regular” expatriates or other interface managers are examined and methodological limitations as well as research implications are critically discussed. MNCs can intentionally assign TCNs with their related competence profiles when expecting boundary-spanning tasks. Originality/value This paper is one of the few published that undergirds the TCN concept with empirical data and illustrates the suitability of specific role-takers such as TCNs for some complex challenges in international and intercultural management settings.

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