Principles of Organizational Behavior, 3rd Edition

19Compose Teams to Ensure Successful External Activity

DEBORAH ANCONA¹, HENRIK BRESMAN², AND DAVID CALDWELL³

¹MIT Sloan School of Management

²Insead

³Santa Clara University

We propose the fundamental principle that teams should be composed of individuals who can effectively carry out external boundary activity. The central argument is that teams need people who can bridge to the outside – people who can get resources, negotiate agreements, and know who to contact for expertise. Many studies (e.g. Ancona, 1990; Ancona and Caldwell, 1992; Bresman, 2010; Gladstein, 1984; Marrone, Tesluk, and Carson, 2007) have shown that external boundary activity is a crucial predictor of team performance. Therefore, an essential element in a team's composition should be ensuring that such activity takes place.

This principle is very broad. In our view, it applies most directly to temporary teams or task forces that are created for a particular purpose and then transfer their work product to others within the organization or the broader market. Typically, these teams draw on resources and information inside and outside the organization and often must gain the support of other entities within the organization if they are to be successful. The greater the complexity of the work and the higher the interdependence with other organization units, the more the team will need to engage in a complex web of external relationships to manage the coordination, knowledge transfer, and political maneuvering ...