Several features of Boundaryless Organizations also deserve highlighting, even though no substantive discussion of them is possible in the present space. First, the authors give too little attention to the legal aspects of their prescriptions, in at least two senses. At operational levels of organizations in the United States, for example, it is possible that some of their prescriptions might be seen by some courts as constituting unfair labor practices even as they seek to span certain boundaries between managers and the managed. That is to say, some courts have seen some boundaries as circumscribing rights or prerogatives in separate preserves. In an approximate sense, the practical issue often involves segregating "exempt" employees from those who are "non-exempt" or covered by wage-andhours-laws, or arranging for a special ruling from the U.S. Department of Labor.
More significantly, one may question whether certain boundary spannings between U.S. firms, or between U.S. firms and those domiciled overseas, constitute illegal restraints on trade or competition. The authors are clearly free to suggest, as they do, that U.S. antitrust and pro-competition laws may have seen their day. But that is a point distinct from where, if anywhere, along the continuum of suggestions they make to reduce certain inter-firm "boundaries," that violations of existing law and current interpretations are possible or probable.
Second, and of far greater consequence, Boundaryless Organizations substantially (if not entirely) neglects issues of national sovereignty. This is perhaps understandable, given the focus of the authors; and neither political officials nor legal conventions in the U.S. or abroad provide precise guidance on the tangled issues. Nonetheless, the question concerning the primacy of Politics or Economics-which leads, and which follows-remains central, to risk a simplification flying in the face of today's complex mixtures and matches.