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 />
demonstrates how change programs as temporary organizations may differ<br />
in terms of the level of boundary activity.<br />
Further related to the contextual interplay, previous research has<br />
acknowledged how temporary organizations are both enabled <strong>and</strong> inhibited<br />
by their parent organizations (e.g. Jensen et al., 2006; Manning, 2008;<br />
Modig, 2007; Sydow et al., 2004). The present study provides evidence of<br />
these interactions in the context of change programs. The parent<br />
organization enables the birth of the change program by providing it with<br />
the initial task, resources, <strong>and</strong> authority. The study depicts how the<br />
representatives of the change program need to be active in further clarifying<br />
its task, gaining additional resources, <strong>and</strong> constantly legitimizing the<br />
program’s existence. For this the change program requires input from the<br />
parent organization, but the program organization also needs to protect<br />
itself from the constraints <strong>and</strong> other potentially negative <strong>for</strong>ces within the<br />
wider organization.<br />
The present findings demonstrate how the parent organization may<br />
inhibit the emerging program. The case studies show how some groups or<br />
individuals within the organization may perceive the change program as a<br />
threat <strong>and</strong> thus aim to restrict its actions. The findings also indicate that the<br />
resource load involved in running the daily processes <strong>and</strong> other projects<br />
may inhibit or hold up the change program from receiving the resources<br />
that it needs <strong>for</strong> making the desired progress. Lending support to<br />
Løvendahl (1995), who argued that a temporary organization’s<br />
embeddedness in its parent organization can have significant effects on its<br />
managerial challenges, the current study maintains how these interactions<br />
should be actively guided by those in charge of the temporary organization.<br />
To provide an example, the advocates of emerging change programs must<br />
be active in negotiating about the resources. Similarly, the program’s<br />
advocates need to establish <strong>and</strong> maintain communication channels to the<br />
relevant decision-making <strong>for</strong>ums of the parent organization. In all, the<br />
findings of the study suggest that active <strong>and</strong> careful boundary management<br />
is critical to the success of a temporary organization.<br />
The findings also add to the discussion on the dilemma of integration vs.<br />
isolation (or attachment vs. detachment) of temporary organizations (e.g.<br />
Johansson et al., 2007; Sydow et al., 2004). Previous research has<br />
suggested that a project or a program is decoupled from its environment<br />
during its initiation <strong>and</strong> recoupled in the end to disseminate <strong>and</strong> integrate<br />
its results (Johansson et al., 2007; Lundin & Söderholm, 1995). The present<br />
findings describe mechanisms that can be utilized to build <strong>and</strong> strengthen<br />
the program’s boundaries <strong>and</strong> to isolate it from its environment. Instead of<br />
simply decoupling the program from the parent organization during<br />
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