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1987) that allows them to be used to provide a common frame of reference for
communication across different knowledge and practice domains. For example,
Nicholas Negroponte’s vision to provide ‘one laptop per child’ helped to bring
together the many different stakeholders who are needed to actually achieve the
goal of producing a cheap and durable laptop for children from poor countries.
Even though this vision is unlikely to be fully achieved in the foreseeable future
the progress that has been made would undoubtedly not have occurred without
his mobilizing vision that acted as a boundary object for the many different
people involved.
Unpacking the three different types of knowledge boundary, the first and
easiest knowledge boundary is a syntactic boundary, created by differences
across groups from different backgrounds in terms of the grammar, symbols,
labels and languages that are used. So, for example, someone from England
may use the term ‘boot’ where someone from the United States may use the
term ‘trunk’ to describe the space, usually at the back of the car where lug-
gage can be stored. If two people from these different countries are com-
municating and do not know that a different word is used to describe this
space, they may misunderstand each other – as when an English person says
to an American, ‘put your things in my boot’ and then is surprised to see the
American trying to put his papers into his shoe! Or, as another example of
something a US friend said to her UK mother-in-law, when describing over
the phone what her husband was wearing as they were about to go out to din-
ner – ‘he looks very nice in his vest (i.e. jacket) and pants (i.e. trousers)!’ One
of the failed NASA projects was the result of different groups of scientists, who
were working on different parts of the space craft, using different measure-
ment systems so that the parts did not fit together effectively once deployed on
Mars. This type of problem is common because of the way different communi-
ties create their own unique language (and typically associated acronyms!) in
order to facilitate their own interactions. Once the differences are recognized
they can be fairly readily overcome through creating a common language so
that a ‘sender’ can represent their knowledge in a way that a ‘receiver’ will
understand.
Semantic boundaries refer to differences in accepted interpretations and mean-
ings amongst actors. At semantic boundaries, the critical issue for sharing knowl-
edge is one of ‘perspective taking’ – the process whereby one group comes to
recognize and accommodate differences in interpretations such that ‘the unique
thought worlds of different communities of knowing are made visible and acces-
sible to others’ (Boland and Tenkasi, 1995, p. 359). Carlile relates the shift from
syntactic to semantic boundaries to task characteristics. As task novelty increases,
he argues, differences in the amount or specialization of knowledge that actors
possess, and the dependencies of actors on one another’s knowledge to complete
the task, become increasingly unknown. In such circumstances, common syntax
may no longer be adequate to transfer knowledge and, consequently, new, shared
meanings need to be created that allow the sharing of knowledge. At the semantic

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