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

Theoretical background
plans should be open-ended to a certain degree to leave room for
spontaneity, creativity, and learning.
Ensuring resources
The second set of success factors relates to the different kinds of (human)
resources that must be acquired or ensured during the early stage of
change. Firstly, the importance of a skillful and charismatic leader is
largely recognized (Fernandez & Rainey, 2006; Gill, 2003), especially
concerning radical change (Lok et al., 2005). The characteristics, abilities,
and activities of change leaders have attracted considerable research
attention (e.g. Kahn, 1995; Woodward & Hendry, 2004). Organizational
change is said to require charismatic leadership (Nadler & Tushman, 1990;
Wang, Chou, & Jiang, 2005) or transformational leadership (Eisenbach et
al., 1999). According to Nadler and Tushman (1990), charismatic
leadership is about envisioning, energizing and enabling and it includes
activities such as communicating the vision and motivating the
participants. The leader of a change effort also needs a sufficient
understanding of the content of change to ensure required credibility and
ability to manage the change effort (Mikkelsen et al., 1991). Nadler and
Tushman (1990) describe this side as instrumental leadership which
focuses on managing structures and processes and includes activities such
as setting goals, defining roles and responsibilities, creating control
procedures, and rewarding participants.
Diverging views concerning the leadership of change have also been
presented. Nutt and Backoff (1993) suggest blurring the leader-follower
distinction and giving up hierarchical control to achieve the required
commitment. Similarly, Karp and Helgø (2008) encourage the leaders to
embrace the uncertainty and chaos related to change by loosening control,
and by valuing communication, sensemaking, and self-governing. The
leaders’ role, then, is to serve as a role model and facilitate conversations
and interactions (ibid.). Adding to this view, Nutt and Backoff (1993)
discuss path clearing, which refers to the leader’s actions in helping the
followers by removing barriers that limit the adoption of changes.
A successful change program also requires a dedicated and powerful
program team. Although a change effort may begin with just one or two
people, some minimum mass of committed people must be recruited early
in the effort (Kotter, 1995). The project-oriented literature describes the
project or program team members as those planning and implementing the
change (e.g. Lanning, 2001). While change management authors often do
not explicitly refer to a project or program team, they frequently describe
the need for dedicated resources for managing a change effort (e.g.
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