ABSTRACT
Working across boundaries is here to stay, or so the pundits
would have us believe. Flatter organization structures, globaliza-
tion and the desire to bring the right people together to work on
the right projects are just some of the reasons why people are
increasingly likely to be required to work beyond their own
departmental or organizational boundaries. In this chapter we
will be focusing on what it means for employees to interact with
people who are not part of their traditional ‘functional’ work
team. In chapters 10 and 13 we look specifically at the interna-
tional implications of working across boundaries. For many peo-
ple, cross-boundary working may seem unfamiliar or even poten-
tially threatening. The business press regularly features aspects of
cross-boundary working, such as joint ventures or strategic
alliances which appear to have gone wrong, often thanks to the
‘human factor’. After all, cross-boundary working involves work-
ing with people whose culture, the ‘way they do things’, may be
different from your own. It means working outside your own
boundaries, whether these be knowledge-based, experience-
based or habit-based and potentially outside comfort zones.
