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

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