Abstract: Drawing on an in-depth historical case study, I examine how boundaries are remade in NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, an infrared facility that was developed over three decades by two dozen organizations. Existing research treats boundaries as something that must be spanned, rather than something that can be changed. I extend the literature by revealing that boundaries are multilevel and malleable, and identify several mechanisms for altering the context of innovation projects. I contribute to our understanding of how to foster collaboration across diverse stakeholders in complex projects.

Abstract: We observe how companies increasingly challenge the traditional hierarchical organization structure by implementing a combination of self-organization, emergent direction setting, intrinsic motivation and culture control practices. These practices stem from fundamentally different assumptions on human nature - that humans inherently want to strive for a greater good and the role of the organization should be to enable them - whereas previous models of employee inclusion such as self-managing teams still reflect extrinsic motivation and hierarchical controlling at their core. We set out to detail these practices and demonstrate their self-reinforcing nature, which we consider the fundamental enabler for the sustainability of this organizational form.

Abstract: Despite increasing interest in strategy as situated practice, studies that examine strategizing practices in the informal economy are lacking. This article draws on Bourdieu’s logic of practice to understand strategic networking practices in an informal economy setting. It sets out an organisational ethnographic study of how an informal business and its network partners do strategic networking. We found that their strategic networking practices pivot around co-opetition, and are characterised within four interconnected themes: open communication, mutual surrogacy, fraternal engagement and naturalisation. These themes are constitutive of an interrelated set of field-specific capital and habitus of the informal business and its network partners. We show how actors adopt and internalise strategizing practices, and how this predisposition may be traced to strategic networking practices, choices and outcomes.

Abstract: Recently calls have been made for questioning the locus of strategic activity in general, and the actors engaged in it in particular. Some scholars have proposed the notion of open strategizing inspired by the idea of open innovation. However, empirical research and conceptual rigor is scarce. This study is an attempt to address this void by proposing a model of open innovation based on longitudinal observational data of a network of top managers in China. The model presented here offers three distinctive processes (content, context, outcome) that mutually signify open strategizing through nine specific activities that function either as binding or generative activities in probing solutions to strategic problems posed by a focal actor in open strategizing sessions.