Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 353
Coordination does not require identical minds
Boundary-object theory explains how shared artifacts can stabilize joint work across social worlds while preserving legitimate local interpretations
Premise
Cross-functional communication often fails even when everyone is articulate. Engineering, operations, compliance, clinicians, customers, and executives may classify the same problem differently because they inhabit different professional worlds. Boundary objects shift the intervention from “align the people” to “inspect what actually crosses the boundary.”
The premise is anti-consensus. Collaboration does not always require one vocabulary, one worldview, or complete translation of each group’s knowledge into another’s. A shared object can sometimes preserve enough common structure for joint work while remaining flexible enough for legitimate local use.
What the model is: Boundary Objects in Knowledge →
Continue in the series
- The essential model
- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
- Executive takeaway
- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryConcepts & Constructs
- DomainOrganization & Structure
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Concepts & Constructs
Delimits an entity, property, relation or condition relevant to understanding communication. Its principal contribution is to clarify what something means, which features constitute it, and how to recognize or distinguish it.
- KnowledgeBoundary Objects
- Related briefActor–Network Theory: Trace What Makes the System Hold
- Related briefShared Mental Models: Coordinate Through a Shared Picture of the Work