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变得越来越普遍。当组织试图同时变得更精简和更灵活时，这就需要在人员较少的情况下创建跨部门边界的团队来缓冲跨功能的通信。学术文献和企业经验都表明，与传统的技术转移相比，来自不同于我们自己的人的直接面对面的输入更快、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。然而，尽管多团队系统有潜力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，需要特别注意高度专业化团队内部和团队之间的边界跨越关系。典型的多团队系统中的大量成员，以及他们知识库的专门性，使得每个成员不可能与其他成员进行富有成效的交谈，从而决定了多团队系统中的正式边界生成器网络。然而，与多团队系统相关的大规模和专业化也为正式网络之外的非正式边界跨越者的出现创造了更多的可能性。这些额外的非正式关系既可以加强也可以破坏正式结构，本文提出的研究将发展新的理论并提供新的数据，以寻求提高我们对多团队系统中正式和非正式网络对过程和绩效的相互作用的理解。该项目将在密歇根州立大学的稀有同位素光束设施（FRIB）研究这些现象，该设施是研究高粒子物理的最先进的设施，在科学发现和知识扩展的竞争世界中处于最前沿。此外，其员工队伍的构成是来自世界各地的顶尖研究人员的多元文化代表，生动地体现了现代跨国组织试图利用其人力知识资本所面临的挑战。FRIB的结构是一组由边界生成器连接的多团队系统，团队间知识共享的需求触发了计划的正式联系和临时的非正式联系。通过深入访谈、调查和网络分析协议，本项目考察了非正式第三方关系的积极和消极方面，以及这些方面如何受到与结构和领导力相关的个人特征、二元关系特征和团队属性的影响。

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.