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

Research methodology and data
Figure 7 Illustration of the analysis of boundary activities and their types
Another major task during the third stage of the analysis was to analyze the
associations between boundary activities and readiness for change program
implementation. The spreadsheet described in Figure 6 was utilized also in
this analysis. Although the research setting was not designed to allow for
systematically testing causal relations, the data provided numerous
indications of potential associations between boundary activities and
indicators of change readiness. Simultaneously as the boundary activities
were recorded in the spreadsheet, their role in creating readiness for change
program implementation was judged based on the expressed intents of the
actors and the actual or expected consequences of the boundary activities.
This often required going back to the original interview data to examine the
boundary activity and its effects more closely in a larger context. If a
connection was found between the quotation referring to a boundary
activity and one or more identified indicators of readiness for change
program implementation, the connection was described in the specific data
field of the spreadsheet (in column “I” in Figure 6).
In some cases, the connection between a described boundary activity and
an indicator of readiness for change was described in a straightforward
manner. Sometimes the interviewees articulated clearly that “We did x to
gain y”. For some other quotations, their connections with readiness for
change program implementation required more reasoning and
interpretation. For example, an interviewee could have described a
challenge that indicated a lack of readiness for change program
implementation, and immediately after that mentioned a specific boundary
activity. If a clear logical link was found between the described boundary
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