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

Discussion
the actual implementation has begun (ibid). The present study provides an
example of assessing readiness for change at the end of the initiation and
planning stage of a large-scale change program, when the change program
is supposed to proceed to implementation.
Providing support for yet another proposition by Weiner et al. (2008), the
current study shows how the organization’s general capacity to change does
not fully determine its success in implementing significant changes.
Although the initial capacity or receptivity to change (e.g. Judge & Douglas,
2009) sets the initial conditions, the readiness for change can be, and
should be, intentionally created in the early stage of a specific change effort.
Indeed, the study suggests that the holistic aim of the early stage of a
change program is to build readiness for change implementation in
technical, structural, social, and political respects. The observations from
case Bureau suggest that even if the organization’s general capacity to
change is considered fairly low, the organization may still be able to
successfully launch large change efforts by paying careful attention to
building readiness for change. Correspondingly, the findings propose that
an organization with a high general capacity to change still needs to actively
create readiness for a particular change effort, for example, by identifying
and assigning key resources and by defining the change visions and plans
for change implementation.
The findings of the study further contribute to the discussion on readiness
for change by showing how readiness may be actively created through
boundary activities. Next, the connection between boundary activities and
readiness for change program implementation is discussed and the
observations are compared to the existing literature.
Question 4: How are the boundary activities associated with
building readiness for change program implementation?
A central effort of this study has been the analysis of the associations
between the early boundary activities and the success of the change
program initiation, providing a response to the fourth research question.
First and foremost, the findings of the study indicate a connection between
the amount of boundary activity and the level of success in creating
conditions for change implementation. The analysis of the three cases
showed how the most successful case program in terms of the readiness for
change program implementation (case Chain), was also the one with the
most active boundary management. Respectively, the case program that
only showed a limited amount of boundary activity (case Center) ultimately
failed and was prematurely terminated without significant outcomes.
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