The Crucial Role of Boundary Spanners — Longitudinal Sourcing. Capability Development in Two Danish Offshoring Enterprises

Journal article, 2017

Discourses on dynamic capabilities of organisations tend to rest in an unclear field of tension between structural and individual explanations. Most contributions submit to the structural features of the concept, yet some allow for explanations of a more individual character, such as top management leadership. This paper conceptualises and analyses the individual contribution of boundary spanners (including both top management and key individuals) to macro-level capability development of organisations. We show how two Danish SMEs’ resources and capabilities transform during an offshoring process of more than five years, where individual capabilities contribute to the struggle to implement changes over time when capabilities are ruptured. We thereby further add to the literature and the understanding of how dynamic capabilities evolve over time in organisations.
Specifically the use of key boundary spanners emerges as a key capability in both cases for managing more complex constellations. The boundary spanners were not only the usual external middlemen but also internal employees (mainly expats) and top management succeeding in coping with the new challenges of dealing with sensing, seizing and acting (reconfiguration) over time. The chosen study setting is the longitudinal, strategic sourcing processes of manufacturing enterprises in low-value captive offshoring circumstances. Although each case represents important and potentially unique learning about strategic offshore sourcing, it is assumed that the variations between the cases studied will provide insights that will pave the way for examining the complexity of the strategic offshore sourcing process in low-value offshoring circumstances. We therefore allow ourselves to compare the cases.