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

Theoretical background
organizational factors that makes large-scale change so complex (Hafsi,
2001). Large-scale organizational change typically involves redistribution of
personnel, finance and power (Spencer & Sofer, 1964), and is also described
to require significant cognitive processes (Balogun & Johnson, 2004, 2005;
Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). Marks (2007) characterizes organizational
transition as a path to an unknown state. During the journey, existing
practices and routines must be abandoned and new ones developed and
adopted. Research on micro-level institutional change describes how
radical organizational change requires a change from one institutional
template, or archetype or schema, to another (Greenwood & Hinings, 1993,
1996; Lau & Woodman, 1995; Reger et al., 1994). Large-scale change has
also been noted to involve a change in the organizational identity (Reger et
al., 1994; Siegal et al., 1996).
Even though large-scale organizational change has become increasingly
common in both the public and private sectors, the management of change
is challenging and change efforts are often considered unsuccessful (Beer et
al., 1990; Beer & Nohria, 2000; Dobson, 2001; Duck, 1993; Hope Hailey &
Balogun, 2002; Kotter, 1995; Roberto & Levesque, 2005; Zand & Sorensen,
1975). Surveys have reported failure rates of at least 70% for change
programs (Siegal et al., 1996; Spector & Beer, 1994; Strebel, 1996). Change
initiatives frequently take longer than expected, meet resistance, face
unforeseen problems, and ultimately fail to yield benefits that would
account for their costs (Beer & Eisenstat, 1996; Darragh & Campbell, 2001).
Change efforts that have been intended as revolutionary sometimes only
produce modest results, better characterized as evolutionary change
(McNulty & Ferlie, 2004; Stoddard & Jarvenpaa, 1995). Although some of
the failures may be attributed to the content of the change initiatives, most
often change efforts are described to fail due to the problems related to
managing the change process (Siegal et al., 1996). Next, process models for
managing change are reviewed, after which the discussion is turned to the
success of change.
2.2.2 Stages in the change process
Similarly to projects and programs, planned organizational change is often
described to progress through successive phases. The planned change
approach is thought to be initiated by Kurt Lewin, who more than 60 years
ago suggested that previous behavior must first be discarded before new
behavior can be successfully adopted. Lewin (1947) depicted a three-step
unfreeze-move-freeze model for changing a social system. In Lewin’s
model, the present condition of an organization or a group is
conceptualized as a dynamic social equilibrium, where a balance is being
maintained by active driving and resisting forces. A change represents a
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