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

Theoretical background
directional: the environment constrains and enables the team, and the team
influences its environment.
Next, attention is turned to boundary activities in the context of projects,
programs and other temporary organizations.
2.4.4 Boundary activities during the early stage of change programs
Although there is very limited research on boundary activities within
project and program management literature, boundary activities have
received some attention in project management publications during the
past decades. Projects as such have been acknowledged as boundary
spanning devices, bringing together people that represent different
organizations and possess different knowledge and skills (Bengtsson &
Söderholm, 2002). The importance of spanning a project’s boundaries has
also been acknowledged in several studies. For example, scanning the
project’s environment for relevant information has been identified as an
important part of the risk management (or uncertainty management)
process (Perminova, Gustafsson, & Wikström, 2008). External information
is described to enhance the project manager’s understanding of the
requirements and expectations towards the project and of the related
threats and opportunities (Olsson, 2007), and active boundary spanning is
also suggested to manage deviations (Hällgren & Maaninen-Olsson, 2005).
Related to boundary activities, a growing stream of research has examined
the use of boundary objects, i.e. shared artifacts or symbols that enable
collaboration across organizational domains and facilitate boundary
spanning (e.g. Carlile, 2004; Levina & Vaast, 2005). Within recent years,
boundary objects in project contexts have started to receive academic
attention (e.g. Koskinen & Mäkinen, 2009; Ruuska & Teigland, 2009).
Although boundary activities have rarely been the focus of study in project
management research, several authors have touched upon activities that
cross the project’s boundaries. Actually, project management literature has
acknowledged all main types of boundary activities, but by using other
terminology. Firstly, the requirement for acquiring information outside the
project team, i.e. information scouting, has been largely reported. Previous
research has described how project teams may seek external expertise and
occasionally bring in external professionals with relevant knowledge
(Ratcheva, 2009). Particularly, customer needs may need to be actively
surveyed (Motwani et al., 2002). The temporary organization perspective
similarly underlines how the project task evolves in active cooperation
between the project and its stakeholder organizations (Vaagaasar &
Andersen, 2007). The importance of the outward-directed informing
activities has also been acknowledged. For example, Müller (2003) has
examined external communication in projects.
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