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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Theoretical background<br />
organization between two points of time (Barnett & Carroll, 1995), <strong>and</strong> it is<br />
both a process <strong>and</strong> an outcome (Ginsberg & Abrahamson, 1991). In today’s<br />
world, the ability to manage change is considered an increasingly important<br />
managerial skill, which is reflected in the vast practitioner-oriented<br />
literature on organizational change (e.g. Beer, Eisenstat, & Spector, 1990;<br />
Beer & Nohria, 2000; Duck, 1993; Kanter, Stein, & Jick, 1992; Kotter, 1995;<br />
Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979; Roberto & Levesque, 2005; Sirkin, Keenan, &<br />
Jackson, 2005). Organizational change has also attracted considerable<br />
attention by academic scholars. The extensive literature on change <strong>and</strong> its<br />
management has focused on topics such as the nature of organizational<br />
change, reasons behind it, <strong>and</strong> the way that the change occurs (cf. Barnett &<br />
Carroll, 1995; Dibella, 2007).<br />
Although researchers commonly agree that change has become a central<br />
feature of organizational life, academic literature on organizational change<br />
<strong>and</strong> development is highly fragmented <strong>and</strong> no universal theory can be<br />
found (Bam<strong>for</strong>d, 2006; Dunphy, 1996; Woodman, 1989). Scholars on<br />
organizational change have been drawing on varying disciplines, such as<br />
population ecology (Hannan & Freeman, 1984), psychology (Kahn, 1995;<br />
Smollan, 2006), institutional theory (Greenwood & Hinings, 1996),<br />
complexity theory (Beeson & Davis, 2000), learning theory (Hendry, 1996),<br />
<strong>and</strong> strategy (Boeker 1989; Golden & Zajac, 2001). Despite several attempts<br />
to categorize the theoretical perspectives (e.g. Fern<strong>and</strong>ez & Rainey, 2006;<br />
Siegal et al., 1996; Van de Ven & Poole, 1995), there is still a lack of<br />
consensus within the field. The multiplicity of the perspectives to<br />
organizational change may be interpreted as a reflection of the complexity<br />
<strong>and</strong> diversity of the phenomenon itself (Buhanist, 2000).<br />
One of the most common ways to categorize the discussion on<br />
organizational change is the division into planned change <strong>and</strong> emergent<br />
(unplanned) change (e.g. Bam<strong>for</strong>d, 2006; Coram & Burnes, 2001; Glueck,<br />
1969). The focus of the current study directs attention to planned change,<br />
which involves a deliberate decision to engage in a guided change initiative<br />
(Levy, 1986). More specifically, the study focuses on the management of<br />
planned, large-scale organizational change. Large-scale organizational<br />
change can be defined as a transition between organizational states that<br />
differ significantly in key organizational parameters (Wischnevsky &<br />
Damanpour, 2006). Such large-scale change is deep <strong>and</strong> pervasive (Led<strong>for</strong>d<br />
& Mohrman, 1993), as it involves simultaneous changes in multiple<br />
organizational dimensions, <strong>and</strong> often radical shifts in each or some of the<br />
dimensions (Barnett & Carroll, 1995). Covin <strong>and</strong> Kilmann (1990) note how<br />
large-scale organizational change initiatives involve multiple goals, utilize<br />
multiple methods to achieve them, <strong>and</strong> typically require an implementation<br />
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