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This chapter reviews the existing literature on modern corporations and unions in Japan. It shows that the prevailing paradigm is insufficient to account for firm and union boundaries. It posits an analytical framework, called the Strategy-Structure-Institutions (SSI) Framework, to rectify deficiencies in the prevailing paradigm. In this framework, corporations and enterprise unions choose their respective preferred organizational boundary. When there is a consensus over the boundaries, the actual boundary coincides with the desired choice. But when they are contested, relative power is important in leading to a specific imposed or bargained boundary. The chapter concludes by noting that unions and firms differ even within the same sector as a result of strategic choice and the accumulation of different capabilities over time.

This chapter discusses a number of issues related to organizational commitment and identity across organizational boundaries in both the private and the public sector. The aim is to fill the gap in our current understanding on how multi-agency factors and inter-organizational relationships influence workers' identity and organizational commitment, and what actions, if any, firms take to foster organizational identity and commitment among people employed by another organization. Evidence suggests that the existing HRM framework of analysis of organizational commitment proves to be too narrow in an increasingly fragmented form of work organization. Case study evidence shows the importance of recognizing the different starting points from which workers are located in terms of access to, and knowledge of, different organizational cultures.

This chapter examines the shifting boundaries of organizations––what they choose to do for themselves and what they increasingly rely on the market for. It briefly considers changes in the horizontal as well as the vertical boundaries of firms. Horizontal boundaries determine what range of output markets firms choose to be in, over and above their principal business activity. Vertical boundaries are determined by the proportion of activities in a firm's value chain let out to external providers of goods and services. The chapter also examines the underlying factors behind these organizational changes, in both the private and the public sectors. In addition, it contains a brief overview of international contracting trends in the G5 economies (USA, UK, France, Germany, Japan) and in Australia.

This chapter and the next three consider the alternative means through which a contracting strategy is devised and implemented. Chapter 5 identifies the sources of added value generated through a greater degree of specialization––what the management literature refers to as the focus on the organization's distinctive capabilities. The different parts of the chapter are as follows: Redefining organizational boundaries; How does specialization add value? Specialization and competition; Patterns of specialization; and Who benefits from specialization?

This chapter raises two questions largely absent from other studies: how are performance gains (and losses) distributed between unequal partners and how do changing organizational boundaries shape the employment relationship? These questions are illuminated by analysing four different forms of public-private contracting arrangements. Section 5.1 provides a brief overview of evidence to date concerning public-private contracting arrangements and their implications for performance and employment. Section 5.2 introduces the four case studies. Sections 5.3, 5.4, and 5.5 analyse the data by exploring issues of performance, power, and change at work, respectively.

When firms involve external partners more actively in their innovation processes, managing knowledge flows across multiple boundaries becomes an important challenge. In this chapter we investigate specifically how organizational, knowledge, and geographical boundaries are bridged by two knowledge integration practices (project management and knowledge matching). We use data from a survey of 415 manufacturing firms on open innovation practices to illustrate how innovation performance relates to the three boundaries that are crossed and how the effects are contingent upon the use of project management and knowledge matching. A main conclusion from the study is that knowledge flows across multiple boundaries in open innovation can be successfully bridged by applying a combination of complementary knowledge integration practices.

We examine how different kinds of uncertainty affect a firm’s decision to develop critical technologies inside or outside its organizational boundaries. We develop three main arguments. First, firms are more likely to incorporate sources of uncertainty by vertically integrating when firm-specific uncertainty is high. Second, firms are less likely to incorporate sources of uncertainty when field-level uncertainty is high. Third, firms are more likely to imitate design solutions adopted by successful firms to reduce competitive interdependence. Using panel data covering the period 1950–2007, we model the probability that car racing constructors participating in the Formula One World Championship decide to control engine production processes by integrating the corresponding activities into their organizational structure. We report results that are generally supportive of our hypotheses.

In the eighteenth century and during the first half of the nineteenth century, the trustworthiness of price data was inextricably tied to personal trust and authority. In their turn, these relied on bodily techniques like glances, hand movements, or attire, together with technologies of personal authority, such as letters. While some brokers-cum-authors developed abstract models of price behavior, others were interested in technical devices which could help record or predict price movements. Some were simply interested in using devices to keep outsiders away from price information. These interests made a far-reaching technological shift, i.e., the replacement of pencils and paper by the stock ticker. This chapter examines the context and consequences of the stock ticker. The ticker transformed the character of price data: a continuous flow of data replaced the rather unsystematic price lists. Trust was shifted from idiosyncratic knowledge of transaction partners to a machine which could travel across social contexts. New modes of attention and observation were introduced, which brought individuals together into price monitoring activities, in public places.

This chapter examines how internal exchange of information supports open innovation (OI). It discusses the result of a study showing a high correlation between cooperation within a group and knowledge transfer across group boundaries and that the smartest contributors to OI projects have strong external contacts. It also suggests that project leaders should establish organizational boundaries to protect valuable data and create projects that ignite the latent energy for cooperation found in every organization.

Although in most cases this is an impossible aspiration, the key issue in designing whole systems development processes is to develop ways in which the actors can see, understand, and think through their ways of working together on issues that cross organisational and community boundaries. This chapter examines the ways in which groups – both large and small – can meet differently to enable the principles of whole systems development to be practised; explores the leadership, design, and logistics of big events as one key mechanism for meeting differently; discusses the consultancy support needed to assist these ways of working; encourages one to reflect and learn from personal experiences of meeting differently; and explores the notion of ‘everyone in the room together’ as a metaphor for meeting differently as practised particularly through processes of action learning.

Outsourcing provides a way for firms to manage processes across organizational boundaries and bridge among different technologies, capabilities, and knowledge. Whenever firms decide to make use of outsourcing, they are required to make decisions regarding the definition of their boundaries, their closeness to suppliers in terms of knowledge, capabilities, and which sensitive information to share. This chapter explores the implementation of outsourcing, with specific attention to decisions regarding supplier relations, division of labour, and requirement for knowledge integration faced by firms. That is, the mix of decisions that defines whether to outsource or not, the amount of knowledge to retain in house, and the types of relationships with suppliers. Relying on survey data collected from a sample of European IT solution providers, we analyse how technological and strategic factors affect the implementation of outsourcing and knowledge integration in client–supplier relationships.

Stakeholder theory is one of the predominant theories on ethics for guiding the inclusion of stakeholders for organizations to balance their interests ethically. However, emerging phenomena, such as the increasing importance of organizations adopting novel forms of engagement like crowdsourcing, challenge stakeholder theory in substantial ways, primarily induced by the vagueness of the term “crowd” and how it could or should relate to the organization. In this chapter, we revise the extent to which stakeholder theory is applicable to crowdsourcing by identifying its limitations, so as to allow for a better understanding of the ethical challenges surrounding crowdsourcing. By so doing, we substantiate some of the ethical consequences of crowdsourcing and propose recommendations on how stakeholder theory can provide a response to such ethical dilemmas. We provide one of the first attempts to debate the role of stakeholder theory for future research directions in the context of crowdsourcing.

This chapter focuses on the external dimension of the European Union’s (EU) chemicals legislation REACH. Although this law does not create a classic experimentalist architecture, it incorporates a number of core experimentalist elements. The REACH Regulation centralizes chemicals regulation at the EU level but involves in its processes a variety of state and non-state actors from different levels of governance within and beyond EU borders. It reaches beyond European borders in three different ways. First, the internal EU processes are extended to non-EU actors. Second, the data concerning the intrinsic properties of chemical substances and possible safer alternatives generated through REACH procedures can be used by non-EU regulators in their own domestic policies. Third, the REACH Regulation constitutes a model of advanced and comprehensive chemicals regulation that can exert external effects on non-EU policy-making processes.