Kou, Chia-Yu2020-12-152020-12-152020-12-10Kou-Barrett C-Y. (2021) Team boundary spanning in a large engineering project. Small Group Research, Volume 52, Issue 4, August 2021, pp. 405-4301046-4964https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496420976836http://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/16092This paper reports on a qualitative study of how 12 work teams and a project-management team spanned their boundaries in a large engineering project. The study identified two types of boundary-spanning activities. Project-level managers carried out receptive activities in which they spanned boundaries vertically, adapted their management practices, and attuned themselves to the teams. Team-level managers’ activities, on the other hand, were reactive: they spanned boundaries vertically and horizontally when they needed to, and made informal connections to peer teams and project-level management. These findings underscore the important role of team boundary-spanning activities in the shape of subsequent inter-team interactions.enAttribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/teamworkboundary spanningmultiteam projectdistributed teamsArticle