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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Discussion<br />
<strong>and</strong> resource seeking has been identified in the context of self-managing<br />
work teams, referred to as persuading <strong>activities</strong> (Druskat & Wheeler, 2003).<br />
The findings of the current study also provide support <strong>for</strong> the findings of<br />
Balogun <strong>and</strong> her colleagues (Balogun et al., 2005) concerning the boundary<br />
<strong>activities</strong> of internal change agents in the attempt to enroll others to their<br />
change cause. The <strong>activities</strong> of aligning agendas, selling, managing up, <strong>and</strong><br />
lobbying reported by Balogun et al. all fall under the category of<br />
legitimating <strong>and</strong> committing <strong>activities</strong>, as defined in the current study.<br />
The differences between the present findings <strong>and</strong> previous research can<br />
be largely explained by the specific focus of the current study: the<br />
temporary nature of the program organization, the parent organization’s<br />
role as the client or target of the change, <strong>and</strong> the focus on the initiation<br />
phase of the program. Firstly, the findings suggest that change programs as<br />
emerging organizations require boundary setting: when a change program<br />
is initiated, its position <strong>and</strong> boundaries need to be defined, explaining the<br />
occurrence of positioning <strong>activities</strong>. Similarly, Yan <strong>and</strong> Louis (1999) employ<br />
the term bringing up boundaries to refer to <strong>activities</strong> that lead to the<br />
emergence of a work unit’s boundaries. Secondly, linking <strong>activities</strong> have not<br />
been reported as a separate boundary activity type in the previous studies.<br />
The occurrence of these <strong>activities</strong> can be explained by the novelty of the<br />
program organization, as linking <strong>activities</strong> contribute to defining the<br />
relationship between the program <strong>and</strong> its parent organization by describing<br />
dependencies <strong>and</strong> establishing communication <strong>and</strong> collaboration channels.<br />
Finally, influencing <strong>activities</strong>, as defined in the current study, have not<br />
come up in the previous studies. While the program is supposed to deliver a<br />
change in the parent organization as its end result, the recently established<br />
change program may already have effects on the parent organization <strong>and</strong><br />
these effects may not necessarily be related to the program’s main task <strong>and</strong><br />
its eventual effects. This finding further supports the notion of the<br />
contextuality of temporary organizations (e.g. Engwall, 2003; Pellegrinelli<br />
et al., 2007) by demonstrating how change programs can have early <strong>and</strong><br />
even unintentional effects.<br />
As discussed in the Methodology <strong>and</strong> Results chapters (chapters 4 <strong>and</strong> 5),<br />
the division of boundary <strong>activities</strong> into distinct types is not an unambiguous<br />
task. The examples provided in section 3.5 show how the same actual action<br />
may be interpreted as a demonstration of different boundary activity types,<br />
depending on the context. Also, the analysis showed that an activity often<br />
includes more than one intention, indicating that an action may<br />
simultaneously represent more than one type of boundary activity. Instead<br />
of aiming to provide an absolute, unambiguous division of the boundary<br />
activity types at the program-parent organization boundary, the current<br />
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