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

Results
Legitimating and committing activities were also performed to
communicate the program goals, plans and progress to a larger audience in
order to gain wider support for the programs. Such efforts were especially
visible in case Bureau, where the program manager confirmed that an
important motive for organizing the early program planning phase as a
series of workshops with broad participation throughout the organization
was to gain wide commitment for the program. Although the program plans
were fine-tuned based on the workshop participants’ comments, the main
purpose of these participatory activities was to make people aware of the
program and committed to it. Bureau’s program manager explained that
when people who resisted the program idea had to justify their views and
come up with alternatives, they were not able to keep up their resistance:
Q70 (Bureau, program manager): “The idea of those [planning] workshops was,
in addition to gathering lots of information and practical knowledge for the
consultancy work, to communicate to 150 key persons that they cannot get over
this with traditional resistance to change: if they want to oppose this, they must
be able to justify their views and come up with a constructive alternative.”
The benefits of the participatory planning approach in terms of
committing people had also been acknowledged in Chain, where the
director of one development area stated:
Q71 (Chain, development area director and steering group member): “It has been
somewhat comforting to acknowledge that the basic lessons taught in the
universities about implementing change and committing people actually hold
true. People need to feel that they themselves are genuine, active actors and that
the changes are not just forced upon them from the higher level.”
Finally, the analysis indicated that enclosing activities may help keep the
organizational environment favorable for the change program. Especially in
programs that involve staff reduction or other drastic employee effects, the
key program actors may protect the evolving program by keeping the plans
confidential and being sensitive in what to communicate about the changes.
During the early days, plans concerning the potential negative effects of the
coming changes may be shared with just a small group of key actors.
Although a fully open communication policy is often promoted, several
interviewees described how in practice this would bring forth resistance,
which might hinder or slow down program planning. Thus, conscious
enclosing activities were conducted to keep the atmosphere favorable. Such
efforts were especially visible in case Chain, where a sub-program manager
characterized the related challenge in the following manner:
Q72 (Chain, sub-program manager): “We are constantly seeking for the right
balance and the right timing for [communicating about the cost cuts] to proceed
with these plans.”
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