Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti

Research methodology and data
In line with Meyer (2001), data gathering involved the collection of both
retrospective and real-time data. In two of the cases (Center and Chain),
two rounds of interviews were conducted to map the early initiation
activities and to follow up on the progress of the planning activities. Such
longitudinal case research designs have been acknowledged as especially
valuable in analyzing the relation between cause and effect (Leonard-
Barton, 1990; Voss et al., 2002). In the third case (Bureau), just one round
of interviews took place, as the program was already in early
implementation at that time. Data collection proceeded case by case, i.e.
one case was addressed at a time, and initial analyses were conducted and
compared with literature, following the abductive methodology (Dubois &
Gadde, 2002).
In line with the recommendations of several case study researchers
(Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007; Glick, Huber, Miller, Doty, & Sutcliffe,
1990; Meyer, 2001), multiple informants were included to view the
phenomenon from diverse perspectives. In each of the three cases, the
interviewees included top managers, program management staff, project
managers, and project team members who had been involved in the
program initiation in different roles, such as founders, active participants,
or key decision makers. The selected interviewees were expected to be
knowledgeable about the change programs and in each case they
represented both sides of the program-parent organization boundary.
Some interviewees were or had been active members of the program core
team, whereas others had a peripheral role in the initiation and planning
activities. Following the realist approach to boundary definition (Scott,
2003), the decision on who was included and who excluded in the core
program team in the analysis was determined by the definitions that the
program participants themselves used. For example, in case Center,
program steering group members were viewed to be outside the program
boundary, while in case Bureau most of the steering group members were
actively involved in the program and were counted as key actors of the
program organization. In each case, decisions related to which persons
should be interviewed were made together with the representatives of the
case organization. As the initial interviews were agreed upon, a snowball
sampling strategy (e.g. Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2009) was used: the
first interviewees were asked to identify other key persons involved in the
program, and these people were interviewed if it seemed to contribute to
the study and was feasible.
The primary data consists of 58 semi-structured interviews with people
involved in the change program initiation in the cases. All interviews were
conducted face to face, typically by two researchers from the STRAP–PPO
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