Formal and Informal Boundary Spanning in Multiteam Systems: An Examination of Triadic Influences on Knowledge Generation and Innovation in Scientific Teams

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Multiteam systems are becoming increasingly pervasive in modern organizations. As organizations attempt to simultaneously become leaner and more flexible, this creates a need to create teams that cross divisional boundaries in a context where there are fewer people to buffer communications across functions. The academic literature, as well as corporate experience indicates that direct face-to-face inputs from people different than ourselves is faster, cheaper and of higher knowledge quality than classic technology transfer. Thus, multiteam situations are a natural response to the competitive pressures faced by many organizations. Still, although multiteam systems have the potential to solve many problems related to both routine operations and innovations solutions, they also create unique issues and conditions that require special attention to boundary spanning relationships both within and between highly specialized teams. The large number of members within a typical multiteam system, along with the specialized nature of their knowledge base, makes it impossible for every member to fruitfully talk to each and every other member, thus dictating a formal network of boundary spanners within the multiteam system. However, the large size and specialization associated with multiteam systems also creates more potential for Simmelian ties the emergence of informal boundary spanners outside the formal network. These additional informal ties can either reinforce are undermine the formal structure and the research proposed here will develop new theory and provide new data that seeks to improve our understanding of the interplay of formal and informal networks on processes and performance in multiteam systems.This project will study these phenomena at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University, a facility that is a state of the art complex for studying high particle physics and is at the forefront of the competitive world of scientific discovery and knowledge expansion. In addition, the composition of its workforce, which is a multicultural representation of top researchers from all over the world, serves as vivid manifestation of the challenges faced by modern multinational organizations trying to leverage their human knowledge capital. The FRIB is structured as a set of multiteam systems linked by boundary spanners and the needs for inter-team knowledge sharing trigger both a planned formal ties as well as ad hoc informal ties. Using in-depth interviews, surveys, and network analysis protocols, this project examines the positive and negative aspects of informal third-party ties and how these are influenced by individual characteristics, dyadic relational characteristics and team attributes related to structure and leadership.