Sustaining Self-managing Modes of Organizing within Hierarchical Organization: Communicative Boundary Maintenance via Nurturing, Exposing, and Blending In

This paper addresses the question of how self-managing teams can sustain their alternative mode of organizing within a more hierarchical organizational setting through intraorganizational boundary work. Using a communication-entered perspective, we specifically examine the communicative practices used to negotiate intra-organizational boundaries. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a self-managing team within the more hierarchical environment of an international medical technology company, we show how the team uses communicative practices of nurturing, exposing and blending-in their self-managing mode of organizing to negotiate their internal boundaries. Through this communicative boundary negotiation, the team was able to maintain its mode of organizing in an otherwise largely traditionally organized firm