Question

Evaluate how boundaryless you are within your organizational context. What actions can you take to become even more boundaryless?

Answer 1

Within my organizational context I can say that my organization is flexible and its vertical hierarchies have been replaced with horizontal networks. The traditional functions have been linked together through inter-functional teams and all these make my organization quite boundaryless. The communication and collaboration is not restricted by seniority level and flows freely across different levels. Secondly the levels of boundary around departments and functions have also been done away with in my organization and hence no silos exist anymore within my organization. These two factors contribute to making my organization boundaryless though not fully.

To become even more boundaryless the actions that I will take is to remove existing psychological boundaries. While my organization’s structure is boundaryless on paper there is the need to enact the boundaryless structure and make it tangible through manager’s relationship with bosses, peers and sub-ordinates. I will also take the action of removing the invisible but thriving authority boundary. Despite making the networks horizontal an invisible authority boundary exists and this has to be systematically removed. Lastly I will take the action of removing the task basis on a gradual basis. This cannot be done all of a sudden but in a gradual manner especially if there is highly specialized division of labor. Removal of task boundaries will give employees a sense of common mission.