Enhancing Team Improvisation Through Boundary Spanners' Metaknowledge: Evidence from IT Project Teams
研究了中国一家大型科技企业93个软件项目团队，发现边界跨越者的元知识通过团队间知识获取和团队内知识转移两条路径增强团队即兴能力，且组织权力强化了这些效应。
Team improvisation is critical for engineering project teams operating under uncertainty, interdependence, and time pressure, yet research has paid limited attention to the cross-team micro-foundations that enable such adaptation. Addressing this gap, we examine how boundary spanners facilitate team improvisation. Drawing on a twowave, multi-source field study of 93 software project teams (N = 496) within a large, project-based technology enterprise in China, we develop and test a dual-path model in which boundary spanners' metaknowledge enhances team improvisation through two knowledge integration mechanisms: inter-team knowledge acquisition and intra-team knowledge transfer. We further show that organizational power strengthens both indirect effects by enabling boundary spanners to legitimize coordination, mobilize resources, and accelerate knowledge integration across unit boundaries. A comprehensive set of robustness checks confirms the stability and reliability of these findings. Together, these results identify boundary spanners' metaknowledge as a critical micro-foundation of team improvisation in complex project environments.