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central line managers in program steering. The next quote characterizes the
importance of this arrangement.
Q76 (Chain, sub-program manager): “Another [central enabler] is that the
business management has committed to be active in the steering group. Even
though the connection to the business is not always that tight, and they might
not have deep knowledge about the details that sometimes pop up in the
steering group’s decision agenda, they are still actively involved.”
To give another example of how Chain’s program utilized the authority of
the line organization, a sub-program manager in Chain explained how the
program had gained a more powerful status when the chairman of the
steering group (i.e. the program owner) changed:
Q77 (Chain, sub-program manager): “When [N.N.] started as the leader of the
program, its status clearly increased, since [N.N.] has the formal title of [highranking
title in Chain], which is higher in the hierarchy than what the original
chairman of the steering group had.”
From the three cases it seemed that Center’s program was not able to gain
the required authority. When the position of the program was discussed
among Center’s top managers, there seemed to be visible fears that the
program would alter the power relations within the organization. A
frustrated key program actor described the situation in the following way:
Q78 (Center, program coordinator): “The program has not been provided a
strong authority to make decisions, for example. The management group of
[Center] has retained that authority. … The discussions with the management
group made it clear that this program, if I may exaggerate a bit, actually isn’t
allowed to change things that much. … The [management group’s] meeting
minutes actually state that “the program is a means to support projects and
activities that aim at the same direction, in a way that increases effectiveness
and synergy, but does not change the existing authority structure”.”
The analysis indicated that guarding activities also supported the
programs’ autonomy. Such guarding activities focused on making conscious
choices of not utilizing the organization’s normal procedures in the
program if they were seen to endanger the program’s capacity to produce
change in an efficient way. To give an example, there was an organizationwide
procedure in Bureau for auditing projects, but the change program’s
projects bypassed the procedure.
Q79 (Bureau, project participant): “There is this [project audit procedure] that
should in principle be applied to all IT programs, projects and systems … But
this is like the shoemaker’s son going barefoot: projects in [the program] have
not followed this policy.”
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