Boundary Spanning and Team Innovativeness: The Role of Teams' Technology Portfolios

Chiara Zisler, Patricia Palffy, Harald Pfeifer, Kerstin Pull and Uschi Backes-Gellner

No 243, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: This paper analyzes how the link between teams' boundary spanning - the process of interacting with external actors, resources, and knowledge - and team innovativeness is contingent on their technology use. Using novel, detailed data on the technology use of teams in a representative sample of approximately 3,400 German firms, we derive six distinct technology portfolios at the team level, for example a comprehensive tech portfolio with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) applications, a minimalistic tech portfolio, or a focused tech portfolio concentrated on IT security. We find that the effectiveness of team boundary spanning in increasing team innovativeness strongly depends on a team's technology portfolio. While boundary spanning is more vital for team innovativeness with either minimalistic or comprehensive technology use, it is less relevant for focused-tech teams. Our results emphasize the critical role of a team's technology portfolio in the link between boundary-spanning activities and team innovativeness. We provide valuable insights for management practice: aligning boundary spanning with teams' technology use is key for improving innovativeness.

Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2025-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ino and nep-tid
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:educat:0243

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