Managing the Boundary – Discovering the Organizational Antecedents of Boundary Spanning Activity in Megaprojects

Megaprojects are characterized by complex interactions and embeddedness in their geographical, social, technical, legal and political context. This is because their outcomes partially depend on the interests and decisions of interdependent stakeholders, who are often project external. Further, megaprojects are internally fragmented or modularized into multiple functional units, which may operate autonomously, yet remain highly interdependent. A connecting element linking the individual parts of projects and their environment is found in boundary spanners. So far only little empirical research has been conducted on the organizational antecedents and effectiveness of boundary spanning activity in the realm of megaprojects. The study identifies organizational autonomy and an open management style as two influencing factors of boundary spanning activity. Additionally, project modularization is hypothesized to suppress the effectiveness on boundary spanning activities on project performance. By using linear regression on survey data based on the inputs of 136 project professionals from 5 European megaprojects, this study found that project performance was directly improved by higher levels of autonomy, open management style and boundary spanning activity. Further, boundary spanning activity mediated the relationship between the two organizational antecedents and project performance. However, the relationship between boundary spanning activity and project performance was not significantly altered depending on the degree of project modularization.