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

Introduction
activities contribute to the success of the change program by building
readiness for change program implementation. In this dissertation, a
qualitative methodology is employed to explore the initiation dynamics of
change programs. The empirical study is based on qualitative data from
three significant change programs. As described, the study is informed by
research on organizational boundaries and organizational change, adopting
the concepts of boundary activities and readiness for change from prior
studies. The aim is to refine and extend the existing theoretical
understanding by applying these concepts in the context of large, multiproject
change programs. In doing this, the study follows the abductive
multiple case study logic (Dubois & Gadde, 2002) that allows the
development of the research frame in the interaction between existing
theories and empirical observations.
The original motivation for the study arose from an attempt to understand
what actually happens during the early phase of large-scale change
programs. The research question guiding the study is: How are the
boundary activities concerning the boundary between the program and
the parent organization associated with the success of change program
initiation? This main research question is further elaborated and more
detailed questions are presented after the literature review in section 2.5.2,
where the initial research framework is introduced.
This doctoral research has been a part of a larger research project on
program management, STRAP–PPO (Strategic linking of programs for
public and private organizations) at BIT Research Centre of Helsinki
University of Technology (now Aalto University, School of Science) in
2004–2008. The project brought together academic researchers and
representatives of several private and public sector organizations that were
interested in the increasingly prominent topic within the project
management discipline, program management. The aim of the STRAP–
PPO project was to discover and develop effective management practices
for programs in different organizational environments and in different
situations and contexts. The goals of the research project directed the
doctoral research to focus on program management. The author of the
study decided to focus the study on program initiation based on discussions
with other involved researchers and early observations on program
management practice. In the early days of the STRAP–PPO project, in
several seminars with the participating organizations and in the initial field
interviews with program management practitioners, program initiation
repeatedly came up as a particularly challenging stage. The early phases of
large-scale change programs were viewed to require distinctively different
measures than initiating smaller projects, and program management
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