Measuring Boundary Objects in an Attempt to Explain Innovativeness

This study explores types of boundary objects, their relationships, and their effect on project innovativeness in the context of systems analysis. Four types of boundary objects are identified and their content discussed. Based on data collected from 258 student analysts, the results indicate that out of syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and metaphoric boundary objects, only pragmatic boundary objects had a strong positive effect on project innovativeness. Metaphoric boundary objects are shown to have positive effect on all other three types of boundary objects. Metaphoric boundary object affects project innovativeness indirectly through pragmatic boundary objects. Surprisingly, semantic boundary objects negatively affect project innovativeness, although not very strongly. A practical implication is the possibility of increasing project innovativeness by enhancing both pragmatic boundary objects and metaphoric boundary objects.