The term "boundaryless" has come to describe the business organization of today and the future as well as

its employees. A boundaryless organization is the opposite of a bureaucracy with numerous barriers and
divisions. In contrast, the organization without boundaries offers interaction and networking among
professionals inside and outside the organization. The organizational model is fluid and highly adaptive,
much like an open system in biology. The form of the business is ever-changing. Professionals inside the
organization form networks and links and emphasize collaboration on projects. Business relationships are
informal and people come together when they share a common need or problem. Employees are grouped
by competencies centered around technology, information, and expertise.
The boundaryless organization has developed primarily due to the widespread dissemination of
information and the presence of information technology. It is also difficult to distinguish between internal
and external practitioners and such distinctions offer little meaning in today's environment.
General Electrics former chairman coined the term boundary less organization to describe his idea of
what he wanted GE to become. He wanted to turn his company into a family grocery store . That is, in
spite of its monstrous size (2004 revenues were in excess of $15 billion) he wanted to eliminate vertical
and horizontal boundaries within GE and break down eternal barriers between the company and its
customers and suppliers. The boundary less organization seeks to eliminate the chain of command have
limitless spans of control and replace departments with empowered teams. And because it relies so
heavily on information technology some have turned to calling this structure the T-form (or technology
based) organization. Although GE has not yet achieved this boundary less state and probably never will it
has significant progress towards that end. So have other companies such as Hewlett-Packard, AT&T
Motorola and Oticon A/S. Let us take a look at what a boundary less organization would look like and
what some firms are doing to try to make it a reality.
By removing vertical boundaries management flattens the hierarchy. Status and rank are minimized.
Cross hierarchical teams which include top executives, model managers, supervisors and operative
employees participate in decision making practices and the use of 360 degree performance appraisals in
which peers and others above and below the employee evaluate performance are examples of what GE is
dong to break down vertical boundaries. At Oticon A/S, a $ 160 million a year Danish hearing aid
manufacturers all traces of hierarchy have disappeared. Everyone works at uniform mobile workstations.
Functional departments create horizontal boundaries. And these boundaries stifle interaction between
functions, product lines, and units. The way to reduce these barriers is to replace functional departments
with cross functional teams to organize activities around processes. For instance, Xerox now develops
new products through multidisciplinary teams that work in a single process instead of around narrow
functional tasks. Similarly some, AT&T units are now doing annual budgets based not on functions or
departmental but no processes such as the maintenance of a worldwide telecommunications net work.
Another way management can cut through horizontal barriers is to use lateral transfers, rating people into
and out of different functional areas. This approach turns socialists into generalists.
When fully operational the boundaries organizations also break down barriers to external constituencies
(suppliers, customers, regulators, and so on) and barriers created by geography. Globalization strategic
alliances customer organization links, and telecommunicating are all examples of practices that reduce
external boundaries. Coca-Cola for instance sees itself as a global corporation, not as a U.S or Atlanta
company. Firms such as NEC Corp, Boeing and Apple Computer each have strategic alliances or joint
partnership with dozens of companies. These alliances blur the distinction between one organization and
another as employees work on joint projects. And some companies are allowing customers to perform
functions that previously were done by management. For instance, some AT&T units are receiving
bonuses based on customer evaluations of the teams that serve them. Finally, we suggest that
telecommunicating is blurring organizational boundaries. The security analysts with Merrill Lynch who
does his job from his ranch in Montana or the software designer who works for a San Francisco company
but does her job in Boulder Colorado, were just two examples of the millions of workers who are now
doing their jobs outside the physical boundaries of their employers premises.