2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

Since 1990 a lot of work has been done by Deborah Ancona (often in collaboration with D
Caldwell). Her initial longitudinal study led to four key findings:
1. teams develop a distinct set of externally oriented activities and strategies
2. these activities are positively and significantly related to managerial performance
ratings
3. there exists a complex interaction between the internal and external processes and it
changes over time
4. there is a pattern in this external dynamic just as there is one in the internal dynamic.
An exploratory factor analysis of data she collected in consulting and production teams
revealed the existence of three major “styles”.
1. The Ambassador style, which includes both buffering and representing. Buffering
means protecting the team from external influences or absorbing them while
representing refers to persuading other to support the team in its efforts. In later work
(for a review see Yan and Louis, 1999) buffering will become a fourth separate role,
namely guarding.
Communication is thus bottom up oriented, deals with how to have access to power
and how to manage the vertical dependence
2. The Task co-ordination style deals with workflow and -structure, refers to how handle
technical or design issues through looking for feedback or negotiating.
In this case communication is lateral, how to manage horizontal dependence.
3. The Scouting style refers to scanning the environment for information/ideas about
relevant aspects of the “environment”; e.g. available resources (and the competition
for it), technologies, etc.
Furthermore, Ancona defined four strategies, which rely on the above described styles.
1. The ambassadorial strategy relies on the ambassadorial style only while the others
are neglected
2. The technical scouting strategy encompasses the scouting style and task co-ordination
but not the ambassadorial style.
3. The isolationist strategy refers to the absence of any style. The team lives more or
less on its own as on an island.
4. The comprehensive strategy is a combination of the ambassadorial style and task coordination,
with a minimum of scouting.
She showed also that the comprehensive style is the only effective one in turbulent situations.
It goes without saying that boundary management is an issue for leaders too, even if all or
some of its behaviors are shown by team members as boundary spanners.
Research question
Ancona tested her hypothesized structure of boundary management with data from consulting
team and new production teams in a commercial setting.
It is know that boundary management in more or less quickly changing situations is positively
related to performance in civilian settings under the condition that the team uses the right
“mix” of styles. Given that we arrived tentatively at the same conclusions in operational
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45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003