Boundary Spanners in the Orchestration of Resources: Global–local Complementarities in Action

Abstract

This research focuses on managerial roles and practices in the local-global deployment of the orchestration of resources. We aim at understanding how local and global managers contribute to 'sensing', 'seizing' and 'reconfiguring' in a transnational firm. We offer an exploratory, explanatory and theory-building case study and an abductive method grounded in the microfoundations of managerial activities. The field research develops inside THALES business units. We obtain two main conclusions that are consistent with our abductive method: we characterize how the boundary-spanning function serves the orchestration of resources and highlight the importance of team and network boundary-spanning modalities. We identify the complementarities between local and global boundary spanners, and we show that rules create the framework suited to empowering the dynamics of team or network boundary spanning at the local and global levels.

Microfoundations of dynamic capabilities: a systematic review and a multilevel framework

“…Our framework also reminds managers to pay attention to the skills of participants at different hierarchical levels and the structural arrangements, such as the effective human resource trainings (Sheehan et al. , 2021) and incentive systems (Merindol and Versailles, 2020). Second, manager may find out how a positive organizational culture works, and eastern culture and philosophy can effectively guide entrepreneurs/managers in practice and remind them to value the group-level construction based on a local culture (Harvey, 2022).…”

“…The microfoundational studies in this field have mostly focused on the individual level, and potential group-level research, especially empirical research, is still lacking. However, scholars have explored collective strategies for shared leadership (Pitelis and Wagner, 2019), shared cognitive schemas (Elsahn and Benson-Rea, 2018), collective interaction (Merindol and Versailles, 2020), and specific forms of interaction such as dialogue (Salvato and Vassolo, 2018) and communication (Haack et al, 2019). We can further dig deeper into the collectivelevel elements, such as collective or shared thinking (Haapanen et al, 2020), heuristics (Loock and Hinnen, 2015), emotions (Brundin et al, 2022), and group conflict behavior.…”

“…We remind managers how the holistic development of individual capabilities contributes to collective capabilities (Felin et al, 2015).Within the organization, the leadership and their interpersonal relationships within leaders are reflected in the organization by shaping the organizational culture and employees' attitudes, motivations, behaviors and abilities (Srour et al, 2022). Our MD 61,6 framework also reminds managers to pay attention to the skills of participants at different hierarchical levels and the structural arrangements, such as the effective human resource trainings (Sheehan et al, 2021) and incentive systems (Merindol and Versailles, 2020). Second, manager may find out how a positive organizational culture works, and eastern culture and philosophy can effectively guide entrepreneurs/managers in practice and remind them to value the group-level construction based on a local culture (Harvey, 2022).…”

Introduction to entrepreneurial finance and technology

“…According to the digital dynamic capabilities of entrepreneurial firms, strategy is essential for building up the business and IT infrastructures, for business and IT aligned vision, and for promoting competitive advantage and growth and doing so both internally and externally as advocated by the new open innovation paradigm. SMEs face considerable shortages of resources compared to larger firms, and thus will experience more significant challenges in terms of achieving sufficiently diverse resources and will require applying various combinations of digitization mechanisms to leverage these shortages (Helfat, 1997;Cassiman and Valentini, 2016;Merindol and Versailles, 2020).…”

Unpacking the Constituents of Dynamic Capabilities: A Microfoundations Perspective

“…We can however picture that front gears emerge from strategy building initiatives developed by owners, boards, and/ or some part of the top management (as in Teece, 2017). We can also eventually understand that back gears elaborate on ways of working available after long and complex evolutionary processes, and some sort of interaction between middle managers and the other layers of the organization (as illustrated in Merindol and Versailles, 2018). The discussion present in Peteraf, Di Stefano and Verona (2013) only shows where the rider pedals its bike and shows that a contingency perspective makes it eventually possible to reconcile Eisenhardt's and Teece's approaches.…”