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

多团队系统在现代组织中正变得越来越普遍。随着组织试图同时变得更精简和更灵活，这就需要创建跨部门边界的团队，在这样一个环境中，需要更少的人来缓冲跨职能部门的通信。学术文献和企业经验表明，与传统技术转让相比，来自不同于我们的人的直接面对面输入更快、更便宜，知识质量更高。因此，多团队情况是对许多组织面临的竞争压力的自然反应。尽管如此，尽管多团队系统有可能解决与常规操作和创新解决方案相关的许多问题，但它们也产生了独特的问题和条件，需要特别关注高度专业化的团队内部和之间的边界跨越关系。典型的多团队系统中有大量成员，加上其知识库的专业性，使得每个成员都不可能与每个其他成员进行富有成效的交谈，从而要求在多团队系统内建立一个正式的边界处理网络。然而，与多团队系统相关的庞大规模和专业化也为西梅利亚关系创造了更多潜力，因为在正式网络之外出现了非正式的边界扳手。这些额外的非正式联系可以加强或破坏正式结构，这里提出的研究将开发新的理论和提供新的数据，寻求改善我们对正式和非正式网络对多团队系统中过程和性能的相互作用的理解。该项目将在密歇根州立大学的稀有同位素束设施(FRIB)研究这些现象，该设施是研究高粒子物理的最先进的综合体，并处于科学发现和知识扩展的竞争世界的前沿。此外，它的劳动力构成是来自世界各地的顶尖研究人员的多文化代表，生动地表明了试图利用其人力知识资本的现代跨国组织所面临的挑战。FRIB被构建为一套由边界扳手链接的多团队系统，团队间知识共享的需求既触发了计划中的正式联系，也引发了临时非正式联系。利用深入的访谈、调查和网络分析协议，该项目考察了非正式第三方关系的积极和消极方面，以及个人特征、二元关系特征和与结构和领导力相关的团队属性如何影响这些方面。

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.