Identity and Difference in Complex Projects: Why Boundaries Still Matter in the “Boundaryless” Organization

It seems intuitive that boundaries, and the processes through which they are constructed, reinforced, transcended, or dissolved are an important aspect of organization, as well as of social life more generally. People are constantly parceling up their worlds, and having their worlds parceled up for them, by a series of distinctions between inside and outside, identity and difference. However, there are many pitfalls on the road to theorizing organizational boundaries. This chapter attempts to identify some of the more serious of these as a prelude to thinking about the ambiguous boundaries of complex project organizations. These, perhaps more than other organizational forms, make it difficult to ignore the multiple and cross-cutting character of constructions of identity and difference. The multifunctional and often multi-organizational nature of projects, bringing together diverse individuals and groups, lend them a hybrid character of being simultaneously inside and outside, of difference within identity (Pieterse 2001).

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