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

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