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

Discussion
view that readiness for change is something that the leaders of a change
effort need to actively promote to create a solid ground for change
implementation (e.g. Neves, 2009). The three cases demonstrate how
program initiation and planning requires much more than just developing
action plans. The change program must, for instance, be legitimized and its
role in the organization must be clarified and communicated. The parent
organization as a target and a client of the resulting change must be
prepared for the changes and thus actively involved in change initiation and
planning.
Furthermore, the current study demonstrates how the perspective of
boundary activities provides a common framework for many different
streams of inquiry in the existing literature on organizational change.
Previous literature on mobilizing change has discussed mechanisms such as
issue selling (Dutton & Duncan, 1987; Dutton et al., 2001), participatory
approaches (Lines, 2004), momentum building (Jansen, 2004), change
communication (Allen et al., 2007; Frahm & Brown, 2007; Rafferty &
Restubog, 2010; Russ, 2008), decreasing resistance to change (Ford et al.,
2002; Mealia, 1978) and gaining employee acceptance for change (Brunton
& Matheny, 2009), all of which concern collaboration between the change
advocates and the change targets. The concept of boundary management
provides a common umbrella for these actions, and the outcome of these
actions may be conceptualized as readiness for change implementation.
By highlighting the change program’s external activity, the propositions
discussed above do not aim to downplay the importance of a change
program’s internal operations. The processes and actions that occur within
the team boundary have many purposes, such as forming and enforcing
team norms and regulating decision making within the team (e.g. Choi,
2002). Previous research has suggested that the team’s internal activities
may contribute to the team’s boundary: as the internal activities promote
team cohesion, boundaries naturally emerge between the team and its
environment (Drach-Zahavy & Somech, 2010; Yan & Louis, 1999). Previous
research has also noted how the internal and external operations of a team
are interconnected and sometimes even difficult to distinguish from each
other (Choi, 2002; Drach-Zahavy & Somech, 2010). Well-working internal
processes have been described as a requirement for effective external
activity, as they provide a basis for interpreting, adapting and integrating
the inputs from outside sources to support the team in its task (Ancona &
Caldwell, 1990). It is apparent also in the current findings that a change
program’s internal activities are in a central role in promoting many of the
dimensions of readiness for change program implementation. For example,
the appointed key managers of a program typically are by their role
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