U.S. AND INDIAN MANAGERIAL BOUNDARY SPANNING BEHAVIORS IN GLOBALLY DISTRIBUTED SOFTWARE TEAMS

Abstract

This paper explores the construct of Boundaries and Boundary Spanning in software development teams that consist of members located in both the U.S. and in India. Drawing on literature pertaining to boundaries in business, global boundaries, cultural boundaries, virtual team boundaries, and organizational boundaries, two studies were conducted. The first study measured the boundary spanning behaviors of software team managers of 25 teams. These results were analyzed in conjunction with a standard measure of software team output. No support was found for the hypothesis that frequency of team manager boundary spanning behavior had an impact on overall team output. In the second study, interviews were conducted of 20 software team managers to better understand their perceptions of the boundaries to team success. Managers cited several boundaries to team output, such as those of communication and issues of power-distance. Nearly all managers felt that time zone difference, a temporal boundary, was the most impactful to their own team success. Through flexible pattern matching analysis, categories of team boundaries have been proposed.