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

Discussion
in different rounds of data collection included in Appendix 1 as well as the
coding framework in Appendix 2 characterize this development.
Finally, limitations of the study are examined. The key limitations
concerning the research methodology were already discussed in chapter 3.
Despite the described efforts to address them, potential challenges still
remain regarding the chosen methodology. First of all, the analysis is
mainly based on interview data. The ability of such data to fully reveal the
nature of daily boundary activities may be questioned. The additional
challenges concerning the retrospective nature of most of the interview data
were also described in section 3.4. Indeed, it has been suggested that
boundary activities would be studied best by observing the day-to-day
behavior of the boundary spanners (Aldrich & Herker, 1977). Following this
suggestion, some earlier studies on boundary activities have complemented
interview data by direct observation or by asking the actors to keep logs of
their daily behavior (e.g. Ancona & Caldwell, 1992a; Druskat & Wheeler,
2003). The recent practice turn in management studies also tends to favor
observation-based methods in studying organizational activities (e.g.
Jarzabkowski, 2003; Johnson et al., 2003). In the current study, the
reliance on interview data may be considered a limitation. Still, the use of
multiple informants, longitudinal data gathering in two of the cases, and a
detailed analysis approach are assumed to provide depth to the findings
and improve their credibility.
Another potential issue relates to the informants of the empirical study.
While the informants in each of the three cases represented both sides of
the program-parent organization boundary, all the interviewees were (or at
least were thought to be) in a central role in program initiation and
planning activities. The perspective of those who would represent the
recipients or targets of change and have a more peripheral role in program
initiation is not directly and fully represented in the data. The findings
represent the key program actors’ perspective to the early boundary
activities, whereas the more peripheral organizational members might
provide a different view to program initiation.
The difficulties related to detecting cause and effect have been mentioned
earlier in this section and described in section 3.5. The results of the study
imply that there is a relationship between the amount of early boundary
activity and the level of success in change program initiation. Although this
connection appears to be strongly supported by the qualitative evidence
from the case programs, more research is obviously required to validate the
proposition. Despite all the described challenges and limitations, the
selected research approach is considered appropriate (and the research
data adequate) to explore the research topic and to draw the conclusions.
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