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

Conclusion
provided indications of connections between the boundary types, further
suggesting that different boundary types might be related to different
boundary activities. Future research is encouraged to examine the
boundary between a temporary organization and its parent organization in
more detail, shedding light on these topics.
The current study has examined a temporary change program’s interplay
with its permanent parent organization mainly by approaching the parent
organization as a “black box”, without a systematic attempt to distinguish
between the different intra-organizational stakeholder groups of a program.
The findings of the current study suggest that there may be significant
differences among the stakeholder groups in how the program’s boundary
is manifested and how it is managed. Future research might explicitly
examine these differences from the perspectives of the stakeholder groups
such as top executives, superiors of the line organization, shop-floor level
employees, or key managers of other ongoing programs and projects. While
research on boundary spanning does not typically distinguish between
different stakeholder groups, the adoption of a stakeholder theory
perspective would allow for a more in-depth analysis of the stakeholders’
varying interests and actions regarding the change program.
One limitation of the current study was caused by the retrospective data
gathering approach that relied mainly on interview accounts. Future
research could seek a deeper insight by participatory methods, such as
observation. The current study has focused on the early stage of change
programs, examining the programs from the emergence of the program
idea to the beginning of change implementation. As change programs
(similarly as projects) consist of a number of distinct phases, a longitudinal
study on the dynamics of boundary activities during the program’s lifecycle
is encouraged. Future research might extend the analysis of the current
themes to the whole lifecycle of a change program. Especially, the
evolvement of the change program’s boundary and the development of the
boundary activities across the program’s lifecycle could be examined by
further studies. Yet another issue worthy of further study is the logics of
how temporary organizations are terminated, e.g. at the end of a change
program.
Since the investigated case programs did not reach completion during the
course of this study and the eventual effects of the programs had not yet
been realized, the ultimate success of the programs could not be assessed.
This study focused on analyzing the associations of the early boundary
activities with the success of the early program stage, interpreted as
readiness for change program implementation. The impact of the program
initiation activities on the eventual success of the program was not
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