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Parallel organizations (POs) perform tasks that operating organizations (OOs) are not equipped or organized to perform well. However, POs rely on OOs’ goodwill for implementation of their ideas and recommendations. Little is known about how POs achieve impact in OOs; this paper aims to examine this important topic.

Through the analytical lens of boundary spanning, the paper analyzes the PO–OO relationship in a manufacturing organization. Data were collected through 31 semi-structured in-depth interviews with OO managers, PO team leaders and PO team members.

Primary PO–OO boundary dimensions were favoritism toward local practice in the OO, specialized knowledge across PO–OO contexts and power asymmetry favoring the OO. The main boundary-spanning activities were translating, which targets specialized knowledge, and anchoring, which targets favoritism towards local practice and power asymmetry.

The findings on PO–OO collaboration, especially PO–OO power relations, complement conventional topics in PO literature, such as POs’ purpose, structural configuration and staffing.

POs should be staffed with team members, especially team leaders, who can translate effectively between the PO’s and the OO’s frames of reference, and facilitate complicated knowledge processes across these contexts. Additionally, senior managers should understand their role in anchoring the PO initiative and its results within the OO.

This is the first study to view the PO–OO relationship via boundary spanning, and thus to identify power asymmetry as a key challenge not previously described in PO literature, and describe how this asymmetry is overcome through anchoring.

This paper aims to reconceptualize the relationship between organizational learning and bureaucracy. Although the two are generally considered to be antithetical, this paper shows that, in some organizations, bureaucracy can be functional for organizational learning.

The central argument is theoretical and builds on two main ideas: firstly, the nature of knowledge creation and organizational learning is conditioned by the organization’s main technological characteristics; and secondly, bureaucracy has a dual nature as an instrument of managerial control and as a vehicle of large-scale collaboration. This study uses examples from process industries as empirical illustrations.

As products and production systems come to embody deeper and more diverse knowledge, their development takes on an increasingly collaborative character. The need to integrate differentiated knowledge and material artefacts calls for specialization, formalization, centralization and staff roles. Hence, technological complexity drives a bureaucratization of organizational learning.

The core argument is developed with reference to industries where organizational learning involves the accumulation of knowledge, not its periodic replacement associated with technological shifts. Its relevance outside these industries remains to be assessed.

Organizations, whose knowledge creation fits the pattern of creative accumulation, should learn to harness formal structures for large-scale collaboration.

The main thesis runs counter to mainstream perspectives on organizational learning. This paper explores organizational learning in sectors that have received little attention in debates about organizational learning.

Extensive collaboration has become critical as increasing complexity of products and processes require firms to access specialized knowledge from diverse sources. Such knowledge provides a rich source of organizational learning that can be best captured and stored through the use of bureaucratic structures to facilitate the necessary large-scale coordination across the firm.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Extensive collaboration has become critical as increasing complexity of products and processes require firms to access specialized knowledge from diverse sources. Such knowledge provides a rich source of organizational learning that can be best captured and stored through the use of bureaucratic structures to facilitate the necessary large-scale coordination across the firm.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.