Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
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Introduction<br />
require different management approaches <strong>and</strong> practices (Artto et al., 2009;<br />
Graham, 2000; Pellegrinelli, 1997). To date, empirically rooted research<br />
evidence concerning the management of multi-project change programs<br />
remains scarce, <strong>and</strong> processes <strong>and</strong> practices <strong>for</strong> program management are<br />
still underdeveloped. Although there is a limited amount of prior research<br />
on change programs within the project management discipline,<br />
organizational change in general has attracted considerable research<br />
attention <strong>for</strong> decades. The literature on organizational change has<br />
suggested various models, guidelines <strong>and</strong> best practices <strong>for</strong> managing<br />
change in organizations (e.g. Fern<strong>and</strong>ez & Rainey, 2006; Greiner, 1967;<br />
Kotter, 1995; Lewin, 1947; Phillips, 1983), but it has not traditionally paid<br />
much attention to the project or program nature of the change endeavors.<br />
This dissertation examines the management of large-scale change ef<strong>for</strong>ts<br />
by taking the perspective of a change program. A change program is viewed<br />
as a temporary organization (Andersen, 2006; Lundin & Söderholm, 1995)<br />
established by the program’s parent organization to deliver significant<br />
organizational change.<br />
The study focuses on the critical initiation stage of a change program,<br />
where the specific features of a program, in contrast to a smaller project,<br />
are particularly evident. Whereas project management literature has<br />
traditionally emphasized a well-defined task as a starting point <strong>for</strong> a<br />
project, a change program may be started with very little knowledge about<br />
the eventual outputs of the program or the appropriate means of delivering<br />
them (e.g. Pellegrinelli, 1997; Thiry, 2004b). There is a clear gap in the<br />
project management research in terms of how change programs are<br />
initiated. Although the importance of the early stages of a project or a<br />
program has been acknowledged (e.g. Morris, 1989; Dvir, Raz, & Shenhar,<br />
2003), project <strong>and</strong> program management research has tended to overlook<br />
the initiation stage <strong>and</strong> focused on detailed planning <strong>and</strong> execution<br />
(Atkinson, Craw<strong>for</strong>d, & Ward, 2006). In examining early project stages,<br />
project management literature has focused mainly on rational planning<br />
tools <strong>and</strong> optimization methods which are unlikely to be feasible in the<br />
early stages of change programs, characterized by high levels of uncertainty<br />
<strong>and</strong> ambiguity (Thiry, 2004a, 2004b). The goals <strong>and</strong> the content of a<br />
change program are likely to evolve during the program lifecycle in close<br />
interaction with the program’s organizational context (Pellegrinelli, 1997;<br />
Thiry, 2004b). Furthermore, programs pursue changes that deal largely<br />
with peoples’ behaviors <strong>and</strong> the whole socio-technical system, not just with<br />
tangible deliverables (e.g. Pellegrinelli, 2002). The early program stages<br />
may be less concerned with producing detailed plans <strong>and</strong> schedules, <strong>and</strong><br />
more concerned with making sense of the program’s purpose, establishing<br />
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