Despite the fundamental relevance of team boundaries for team research, scholars have rarely explored their origins and characteristics. Instead, team research commonly assumes the existence of formally defined, stable team boundaries. We challenge this assumption by asserting that beyond formal assignment, team members’ individual perceptions of a team’s boundaries are driven by individual-level categorization processes and team-level task dynamism. Building on multiple team members’ mental representations of team boundaries, we propose that team boundaries are likely mutually inconsistent and vary in their degree of permeability. This permeability and inconsistency serve to clarify how membership change and overlap can induce cognitive and emotional spillovers across teams. The proposed conceptual model links the origins of boundary emergence with their characteristics by explaining how membership structure and dynamics drive the characteristics of team boundaries. This account offers a new perspective on how individual perceptions of work affiliations can shape a team’s boundaries.

中文翻译：

---

进还是出？探索团队边界的不一致性和渗透性

尽管团队边界与团队研究有着根本的相关性，但学者们很少探讨其起源和特征。相反，团队研究通常假设存在正式定义的稳定团队边界。我们通过断言除了正式分配之外，团队成员对团队边界的个人看法是由个人级别的分类过程和团队级别的任务活力驱动的，从而挑战了这一假设。基于多个团队成员对团队边界的心理表征，我们提出团队边界可能相互不一致，并且其渗透程度各不相同。这种渗透性和不一致有助于阐明成员资格的变化和重叠如何导致跨团队的认知和情感溢出。提出的概念模型通过解释成员结构和动态如何驱动团队边界的特征，将边界出现的起源与其特征联系起来。这个帐户提供了关于个人对工作从属关系的看法如何塑造团队边界的新视角。