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

Discussion
study demonstrates how the boundary activity of the key actors of emerging
change programs is diverse and consists of a number of different types of
activities, each with their distinct purpose in advancing the program.
The three studied cases all demonstrated versatile boundary activity in
terms of the different boundary activity categories and types. Actually, the
distribution of boundary activities into the four activity categories (based
on the activity direction) was remarkably similar across the cases. Firstly,
the findings suggest that a significant part (at least 40% in the three
investigated cases) of an emerging change program’s boundary activity is
about crossing the program’s boundary outwards in the form of informing,
legitimating, committing, and influencing. This observation suggests that
the key advocates of an emerging program are considerably active in
making the program, its goals and actions known and accepted in the wider
organization. Secondly, a significant part of the boundary activity (about
one third) focuses on defining and shaping the boundary by the various
negotiating, positioning, and linking activities. These findings provide
support for the earlier observations regarding the emerging change
program’s need to establish its boundaries and gain an acknowledged
position in the larger organizational context. Thirdly, according to the
findings, boundary activities related to crossing the program’s boundary
inwards are somewhat less frequent (representing a bit more than 20% of
all boundary activity). This observation indicates that while emerging
programs require input from the parent organization, even a larger part of
the early program activities is formed of representing the program and
establishing a legitimate position for it in the management system of the
parent organization. Finally, isolative boundary activities seem to be the
rarest category of boundary activity (with less than a 10% share). The
findings still provide a number of examples how such isolative activities
may be crucial in protecting the emerging program and in ensuring
favorable conditions for the early program activities.
Interestingly, even though the division of boundary activities into
different categories was very similar across the cases, there were significant
differences in the overall amount of boundary activity. In relative
comparison to the other cases, the change program in Chain showed a high
volume of boundary activity, whereas case Center indicated clearly less
active boundary management. Case Bureau fell between these two, still with
a relatively high volume of boundary activity. Building on this observation,
whereas the studies by Ancona and Caldwell (Ancona, 1990; Ancona &
Caldwell, 1992a) suggest that teams may demonstrate certain strategies for
external activity by specializing on certain kinds of boundary activities, the
present findings propose that change programs that are in the early stage
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