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

Research methodology and data
control, and coordination. In this study, data from these other questions
serve as background information.
The retrospective nature of the interview accounts can be considered as a
limitation due to recall bias, post-hoc rationalization, and difficulties in
determining cause and effect related to the events (see e.g. Glick et al.,
1990; Leonard-Barton, 1990; Voss et al., 2002). People have a tendency to
impose order retrospectively on phenomena that have actually been
complex, ambiguous, and in conflict (Kimberly & Bouchikhi, 1995). The
elapsed time between the events and the interviews may have been
especially problematic in one case (Bureau) in which the program had been
initiated as much as four years before the interviews. The use of multiple
cases with multiple informants, and the review of program-related
documents are assumed to diminish the problems related to the
retrospective analysis. Also, as Kimberly and Bouchikhi (1995) argue, the
subjective tendencies related to the retrospective accounts are “part of the
story”, since organizations can be simultaneously viewed as the contexts for
and the results of human behavior. Thus, rather than focusing solely on
objective indicators and avoiding what some researchers would treat as
errors and “validity threats”, subjective accounts can rather be viewed as
useful material for analytical purposes in the pursuit of uncovering the
deeper patterns that lie beneath the surface (ibid.).
Regarding each case, the interview data was complemented with
secondary material to support the analysis and to enable the triangulation
of data sources (Eisenhardt, 1989; Jick, 1979; Yin, 1994). Program-related
documentation was gathered in each case, including program and project
level plans, presentation materials, reports, press releases, and e-mails to
the research group. Extranet documentation about the case organizations
and case programs was also collected. Concerning cases Center and Chain,
there was also additional interview material available, describing the
organizations’ other programs and projects. These interviews were used as
complementary material to gain a deeper understanding of the case
organization and its way of conducting program and project-based work.
Concerning the first case, Center, three workshops were organized in the
case organization jointly with the university research team during the last
six months of the program, before its termination. In the first workshop,
general principles of program management were discussed. The last two
workshops concerned the case program in particular and included attempts
to clarify the program’s goals and scope. In these workshops, preliminary
results from the interviews were utilized to discuss the challenges related to
the program. A fourth workshop was organized two years after the program
was terminated to discuss the reasons that had led to the premature
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