Theorizing limits: an exploration of boundaries, learning, and emancipation

Seeking to move beyond limits in order to solve problems is an important part of organizational learning and is therefore potentially emancipatory. Communicating across boundaries in order to expand capabilities might contribute to understanding and therefore to community building. When limits to current capacities are experienced, individuals who admit their own limitations set the stage for both organizational learning and emancipatory processes. Stories of two different departments in the same organization are contrasted in terms of the micro‐emancipatory processes that led to deliberate change in one and not the other. Attention to, and respect for, the three key functions of boundaries is proposed to make a difference in experiences of autonomy and community.