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

Results
4.5.3 Identified associations between boundary activities and
autonomy
Table 19 illustrates how the boundary activities were analyzed to contribute
to the autonomy of the change programs. Next, these proposed associations
are described and illustrative examples from the interview data are given.
Table 19 identified associations between boundary activities and the autonomy of the change
program
Boundary activity types
Legitimate position
in the organization
Autonomy
Authority and
autonomy to
realize change
Positioning and negotiating X X
Linking
Task coordinating
Information seeking
Resource seeking
Informing
Legitimating and committing
Influencing
Guarding
Enclosing
X
X
X
X
Firstly, the analysis indicated how boundary activities had a central role in
establishing a legitimate position for the programs. Not surprisingly,
legitimating and committing activities contributed to the legitimacy of the
programs. To make a change program legitimate, the central program
actors presented their ideas and tried to make them accepted through
various selling methods. While the earliest legitimating efforts were mainly
about communicating the need for change, the dialogue between the key
program actors and the representatives of the parent organization
continued after the need for change was acknowledged. The next challenge
was to make the program approach in general and the proposed change
program in particular accepted as the appropriate way to address the need
for change. Such legitimating and committing activities were especially
common in case Bureau, where they were targeted both at the top
management and the employees as the targets of change.
In this pursuit of legitimacy, Bureau’s key program actors acknowledged
the value of consultants as an external authority that could be utilized to
justify the plans in the eyes of top management. In Bureau, a report
summarizing the current state analysis was supposedly written by the
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