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

Theoretical background
already during the early program stage. When change programs are
planned within an autonomous program team, design decisions can be
made efficiently, without constant input and ratification of line managers.
On the other hand, these programs may require a significant amount of
rework, since the original solutions may not fully meet the business needs.
Acknowledging that somewhat contradictory characterizations have been
reported in previous research regarding the interaction of temporary
organizations with their context, the current study makes an attempt to
shed light on this interaction during the early days of a change program.
The study aims to dig deeper into the activities that managers of emerging
change programs use in achieving both integration with and isolation from
the program’s parent organization. In conceptual terms, the study examines
how the temporary organization’s boundaries are created, maintained,
guarded and crossed. In the next section, attention is turned to the
literature on organizational boundaries and boundary activities.
2.4 Organizational boundaries and boundary activities
To address the relationship between an emerging change program and its
parent organization, the concepts of organizational boundaries and
boundary activities are adopted. The study analyzes the emerging boundary
between a change program and its parent organization, and the activities
that address the boundary, e.g., by shaping or spanning it. A simple
illustration of the program-parent organization boundary is provided in
Figure 2.
Figure 2 The focus of the study is on the program-parent organization boundary
Next, literature on organizational boundaries and boundary activities is
introduced and discussed from the perspective of the current study.
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