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The ability of organizations to recognize, source and integrate key outside knowledge is important for their strategy, innovation and performance over time (Grant and Badden-Fuller, 1995; Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998; Teece, 2009). Within organizations, facilitating knowledge exchange between communities is also essential to develop an organizational advantage (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992; Brown and Duguid, 1998). Despite their importance, sourcing and integrating knowledge remain difficult tasks. Boundaries between groups or between the organization and its environment can be an obstacle to knowledge sharing and innovation (Brown and Duguid, 1998; Leonard-Barton, 1992).
Three types of individuals play major roles in the transfer and integration of external knowledge: boundary spanners, gatekeepers and knowledge brokers. These actors work at the frontier of organizations and groups and are important interfaces between organizations and their environment (Leifer and Delbecq, 1978; Evers and Menkhoff, 2004). Although research on these individuals is well-developed, in practice the definitions of the concepts overlap and still need a clarification. This article proposes a new set of definitions which articulate the differences and links between these concepts. Avenues for future research are also identified.
The “boundary spanner” phrase has been used in a variety of contexts with diverse meanings (Kostova and Roth, 2003; Kusari et al., 2005; Levina and Vaast, 2005). Several works on individuals crossing the borders of organizations use the concepts of gatekeeper, boundary spanner and, sometimes, knowledge broker in an interchangeable way (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Nochur and Allen, 1992; Ramirez and Dickenson, 2010). An analysis of the origins of the gatekeeper concept allows defining the central role of gatekeepers as information controllers and decision-makers (Lewin, 1947). From there, the functions of gatekeepers have been defined as either environment monitoring and information dissemination (Katz and Tushman, 1980) or as regulators of information (Awazu, 2004; Barzilai-Nahon, 2008a). The definition of knowledge brokers is also unclear. Researchers have defined them either as individuals participating to multiple groups and facilitating the transfer of information among them (Brown and Duguid, 1998) or as “people moving between the two different worlds of knowledge producers and knowledge users” (Meyer, 2010a).
A review of the literature covering more than 100 sources permits to propose a new set of definitions of the concepts of boundary spanner, gatekeeper and knowledge...