Currently, boundary crossing ― activities outside of daily contexts ― is becoming more important. Boundary crossing both improves peoples’ work productivity and also enriches their career, thus providing various values to individuals and organizations. Such a notion has increasingly attracted scholars of various domains, including administrative science. With such an interest, the Japanese Association of Administrative Science hosted the Special Workshop on Boundary Crossing in January 2019 at Nagoya University. Presentations at the workshop were sublimated into articles contained in this special issue of the Japanese Journal of Administrative Science. They all approach the nature of boundary crossing from original perspectives. As an introduction to the special issue, this article provides an overview of boundary crossing studies. First, we review the concept of “boundary” in this research domain as well as the types of boundary crossing and associated learning mechanisms. Second, we describe what boundary crossing brings to individuals and organizations. Third, we present the aim of this special issue and the outlines of the respective articles. Finally, implications for future research are provided.

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This paper analyzes the negotiation of meaning at boundary crossings. Many studies have shown how the concept of boundary crossings is used in an interdisciplinary sense. In this paper， I focus on boundary crossings based on activity theory and communities of practice. In the existing literature， the negotiation of meaning is mainly placed in a homogeneity context. However， this paper offers a perspective on the importance of the negotiation of meaning at boundary crossings in a heterogeneity context. The review of the literature reveals that brokers in external communities of practice can introduce external practices into internal communities of practice through the reconciliation of decentralized selves. For brokers， the experience of crossing boundaries promotes the cognition and conflict of decentralized selves. The mechanism of reconciliation of decentralized selves for brokers can be explained with dialogical self theory with polyphony. Furthermore， the reconciliation of decentralized selves promotes brokers to deliver the negotiation of meaning at boundary crossings in a heterogeneity context.

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Job crafting （JC） is a proactive action taken by employees to make their work experience more meaningful. The concept behind it is the enhancement of “private emotions” such as a private interest and/or pleasure in work； however, JC for such private emotions has not been well studied. Private emotions have sometimes been suppressed or eliminated as a non-commercial or non-intellectual element in the workplace or in capitalist societies. However, new work styles that transform private emotions into creative energy are now attracting attention. Therefore, we focused on pro bono work, which is a social contribution using job-related skills and we asked the following research questions： “In the process of crossing boundaries between commercial business （commodity exchange） and non-profitable pro bono work （reciprocal exchange as gift/counter-gift）, what differences in the relationship between the self and others are experienced? How does meaningfulness and engagement with work change in the process?” We propose the concept of emotional JC and discuss a future work style that is an extension of neoliberal entrepreneurship, and alternative work styles in post-capitalist societies.

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In this research, two categories of people were distinguished: （a） people who cross boundaries and （b） people who accept those crossing the boundaries．Past research on cross-boundary learning mainly focused on people who cross boundaries, not paying attention to people who accept the behavior of those crossing the boundaries．The aim of this research is to show the importance of research on the latter people, especially in terms of cross-boundary behavior in corporations．An empirical survey of Japanese managers, whose subordinates were foreign employees at their companies, revealed how Japanese managers learn from their foreign subordinates． Comparing the learning processes between the two categories of people, it was found that the “primitiveness of boundary crossing for redefinition of legitimacy” and “unpredictable cross-boundary experience” were experienced by people in the latter category．This research also proposes future research topics on people who accept and learn from those crossing boundaries．

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