Boundary spanners and intra‐MNC knowledge sharing: The roles of controlled motivation and immediate organizational context

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/gsj.1171
• Author: Grazia D. Santangelo,Dana Minbaeva
• Date: 01 May 2018
• Published date: 01 May 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Boundary spanners and intra-MNC knowledge

sharing: The roles of controlled motivation

and immediate organizational context

Dana Minbaeva

1

| Grazia D. Santangelo

2

1

Department of Strategic Management and

Globalization, Copenhagen Business School,

Frederiksberg, Denmark

2

Department of Political and Social Science,

University of Catania (Italy), Catania, Italy

Correspondence

Grazia D. Santangelo, Via Vittorio Emanuele 8,

95131 Catania, Italy.

Email: grsanta@unict.it

Research Summary: We examine the conditions under

which boundary spanners positively contribute to intra-

MNC knowledge sharing. Specifically, we argue that the

knowledge-sharing behavior of boundary spanners should

not be taken for granted, as it is affected by the indivi-

dual’s motivation to share knowledge and is contingent

upon the immediate organizational context in which the

individual is located. An analysis of data covering

482 individuals located in different business units of a

Danish MNC confirms our arguments.

Managerial Summary: Boundary spanners are employ-

ees who act as knowledge intermediaries between many

individuals from within and outside their organizations.

They are well connected internally and externally and

share knowledge across MNC units to a greater extent

than non-boundary spanners. However, their contribution

to knowledge sharing should not be taken for granted as it

depends on their motivation and their immediate context.

KEYWORDS

boundary spanners, controlled motivations, intra-MNC

knowledge sharing, knowledge hub units

1|INTRODUCTION

Global organizations experience several challenges when they attempt to integrate and transfer

knowledge internally. For example, they must coordinate a network of geographically dispersed

units and address knowledge management challenges (Ghoshal & Bartlett, 1990). More specifically,

multinational corporations (MNCs) need to integrate knowledge found in host country environments

Received: 5 June 2016 Revised: 16 July 2017 Accepted: 25 July 2017

DOI: 10.1002/gsj.1171

Copyright © 2017 Strategic Management Society

220 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gsj Global Strategy Journal. 2018;8:220–241.

with existing organizational knowledge and, at the same time, ease the sharing of individuals’

knowledge (Gupta & Govindarajan, 2000; Kogut & Zander, 1993; Szulanski, 1996). Research on

intra-MNC knowledge sharing highlights the importance of boundary spanners for facilitating cross-

unit knowledge transfers (e.g., Kogut & Zander, 1992) based on the view that these individuals play

a key information-processing role (Allen & Cohen, 1969; Friedman & Podolny, 1992; Tortoriello &

Krackhardt, 2010; Tushman & Scanlan, 1981a, 1981b). Thus, boundary spanners possess an infor-

mation advantage because they have access to diverse forms of knowledge (see, e.g., Tushman &

Scanlan, 1981a) and they are able to support innovation (see, e.g., Tortoriello & Krackhardt, 2010;

Tushman, 1977).

Boundary spanners have traditionally been defined as people who act as knowledge intermediar-

ies among many individuals within and outside their organizations. They are strongly connected

internally and externally (Tushman & Scanlan, 1981a) and, hence, serve as a critical link between

the organization and its environment (Adams, 1976; Aldrich & Herker, 1977; Friedman & Podolny,

1992). Within MNCs, boundary spanners are “deeply embedded in both a specific local context and

the MNC as a whole”(Schotter & Beamish, 2011, p. 255). They play a crucial role in bridging rela-

tionships between different MNC units or across different country contexts (Mudambi & Swift,

2009), especially in terms of bringing in external local knowledge (Tushman & Scanlan, 1981b) and

facilitating intra-MNC knowledge flows in order to alleviate information asymmetries and percep-

tion gaps (Bouquet & Birkinshaw, 2008; Schotter & Beamish, 2011).

Given their strong internal and external ties, boundary spanners are assumed to unambiguously

contribute to knowledge sharing across MNC units (Kogut & Zander, 1992; Reiche, 2011). How-

ever, we believe there is a need to nuance these general arguments and to investigate further the

knowledge-sharing behavior of boundary spanners. By acting as knowledge intermediaries among

many individuals, boundary spanners may extract rents by exploiting structural holes in order to, for

example, advance their own careers (Burt, 1992). Therefore, the simple presence of boundary span-

ners may not guarantee a high degree of knowledge sharing across MNC units, as boundary span-

ners may behave opportunistically and their knowledge-sharing behaviors should not be taken for

granted. This highlights an unanswered question: Under what conditions are boundary spanners

likely to contribute the most to intra-MNC knowledge sharing?

To answer this question, we draw on self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Gagné &

Deci, 2005) and research focused on knowledge as a source of power (Blackler, Crump, & McDo-

nald, 2000; Brown & Woodland, 1999; Davenport, 1997; Jarvenpaa & Staples, 2001; Mudambi &

Navarra, 2004; Weiss, 1999). We argue that boundary spanners have more at stake than non-

boundary spanners when making their knowledge available to others, and they may tend to expend

only the minimum required effort in order to derive gains in the future by withholding knowledge in

the present (Bock, Zmud, Kim, & Lee, 2005). Whether this agency issue arises depends on the

boundary spanner’smotivation to share knowledge (e.g., Bock et al., 2005; E. F. Cabrera & Cab-

rera, 2005; A. Cabrera, Collins, & Salgado, 2006; Osterloh, Frost, & Frey, 2002; Quigley, Tesluk,

Locke, & Bartol, 2007; Reinholt, Pedersen, & Foss, 2011) and the immediate context in which the

boundary spanner is located (Alvesson, 1993; Armbrecht et al., 2001; Empson, 2001). We test our

arguments on survey data collected from a single MNC with a complex, dispersed network struc-

ture. Our final sample encompasses 482 individual respondents.

We contribute to research on boundary spanners and intra-MNC knowledge sharing in several

ways. First, by investigating the knowledge-sharing behaviors of boundary spanners across MNC

units, we add to extant research, which has thus far focused on vertical knowledge flows (Reiche,

2011). Second, our study sheds light on specific behavioral conditions that influence boundary

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