Burt, Ryan, and Heather are members of the marketing team at Model Industries, Inc. (MII), responsible for generating ideas for new marketing strategies. Burt has done a phenomenal job in gathering information necessary to help the team understand the desires and needs of the client. All things being equal, Heather has the best record of making good recommendations to Jeremy, vice president of marketing. Ryan can make some good recommendations, but sometimes his recommendations are completely off base. Usually, Jeremy pays careful attention to what Heather has to say, but generally does not pay much attention to what Ryan proposes. In addition to Jeremy, Heather has been meeting with the vice president of operations and other members of the executive team to gain support for their request to increase the marketing budget. Heather is engaging in which of the boundary-spanning processes?
A) Systems monitoring
B) Task coordinator
C) Coordination
D) Scout activity
E) Ambassador activity

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Heather is engaging in ambassador activity by meeting with members of the executive team to gain support for increasing the marketing budget. Boundary-spanning processes involve connecting and coordinating activities across different parts of an organization, and ambassador activities specifically involve representing the goals and needs of one part of the organization to others. Burt's activities involve data collection, which could be considered a form of systems monitoring, and Ryan's activities involve generating ideas, which could be considered a form of task coordination, but neither of these fully capture Heather's role as an ambassador for the marketing team. Coordination is a more general term that could potentially apply to any boundary-spanning process, but it doesn't specifically capture the idea of representing one group to another. Scout activity typically involves gathering information from outside the organization, which is not what Heather is doing in this case.

Burt, Ryan, and Heather Are Members of the Marketing Team