General systems thinking places a boundary between a system and its environment or between one sub-system and another across which transactions or exchanges flow. Management at this interface involves
observing, interpreting and intervening at the boundary between groups, departments and between the organisation and external entities and forces.
Power and control is available to those who
This brings involvement in key events and access to critical information. The position and role empowers the holder to speak, define reality and advocate action. Boundary controllers can create buffers and selectively filter transactions to serve their self-interests.
Secretaries, aides, project co-ordinators for example can have more influence than their ascribed role suggests. They can define what is real by timing, exaggeration or understatement or filtering information. Under Nixon in the Whitehouse, Watergate events showed Erlichmann and Haldemann tightly controlling access to the President.
Someone must manage at the boundary. Without it the organisation can atrophy becoming closed, isolated and ignorant. Stafford Beer refers to senior managers gathering external intelligence as the "brain of the firm" linking the organisational unit with points and forces in its internal and external environment.
By managing boundary transactions the organisation brings in what it needs to be autonomous, defend itself and grow. Recruitment is a good example. Key skills are brought in and membership controlled. Those involved at the recruitment boundary can enjoy high status with those who join the organisation.
Avoidance rituals - keeping clear of issues and potential problems that may threaten independence - as Goffman notes, are another feature with a political edge.
Autonomous groups and departments who can defend their position are powerful. Indeed rather than a highly integrated, unitary organisation, an alternative model can be based on coupled but autonomous groups/departments. At the boundaries individuals compete for control. Those acting from self-interest, knowing or not knowing the effect they have on others, may threaten organisational autonomy and cohesion. Boundary managers anticipate such moves and their effects by:
McGregor pointed out the significance of the manager as a linking pin in the organisation. A member of both his/her own group of staff and the boss's group, if upward and downward communications and expectations are not well transacted, the lower staff group can become isolated in the organisation. Frustration can set in. The weak linking-pin manager fails to win the resources and permissions that the lower group needs. Members of the group may seek to short-circuit the weak link by going directly to the boss's boss.
