Managing Change Across Boundaries: Boundary‐Shaking Practices¹

Abstract

To date, boundary spanning has primarily been conceived of as an activity relating an organization to its environment, including other organizations with which it cooperates and competes. In contrast, this study focuses on the boundary spanning practices of individuals acting as change agents to implement boundary-shaking change initiatives across intra-organizational boundaries. These boundary-shaking individuals all work for blue-chip organizations in sectors as diverse as pharmaceuticals, consultancy and automotive. The change initiatives are equally diverse, including post-merger integration, exploitation of across-business synergies and implementing more integrative structures. Through our examination of boundary-shakers we are able to extend what we know about internal change agency and change agent skills and practices. Our starting point is that organizations are comprised of networks of people with a degree of common interest. Our research shows our research subjects to be active movers and shakers in these networks, using their knowledge of the organizational political context and the motivations of others to create new networks (or new meanings within old networks), which then enables them to pursue their change objectives.

The value of communicative skills for developing an energy strategy

“…Similar competences and activities have also been discussed in literature, regarding for example organisational change (e.g. Balogun et al, 2005;Kezar, 2012) and strategic planning (e.g. Nordqvist & Melin, 2008).…”

“…By framing the energy target as a crossorganisational responsibility within the public organisation, the Investigation Team foresaw that they had to work across organizational boundaries to influence and create action among various actors in order to secure and speed up the future implementation of the energy strategy. Working across while at the same time striving to change the organisational structures has been described as "shaking the organisational boundaries" (Balogun et al, 2005) Thus, although talking and acting along informal decision routes he made sure to anchor his ideas the formal way. 26 However, similar to the professionals studied by Maitlis and Lawrence (2007), the Energy Expert was dependent on, and given opportunities due to, others' perception of him as a legitimate person.…”

“…Balogun, Gleadle, Hailey, and Willmott, 2005;Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991;Rouleau and Balogun, 2011), and has been applied as an approach to understand and explain how individuals initiate, get acceptance for and implement organisational changes. In order to implement changes, managers need to influence how others make sense by dispersing their own understanding of the change (e.g.…”

A realist analysis of hospital patient safety in Wales: applied learning for alternative contexts from a multisite case study

“…Normalisation of the 1000 Lives + programme was also associated with clear leadership of change, internal health-care practice maturation emergent from the MI-PDSA approach, and complex 'boundary brokerage' 34,91,726 to signal an identity for the programme, its adherents and associated health-care practices. The creative institutional work required to change beliefs, values and, through time, associated norms of practice was frequently displayed by actors occupying hybrid professional roles, including nurse-managers, associate directors with dual management and clinical portfolios, and board-level clinical practitioners.…”

The structuration of managing for results : a practice perspective on middle managers in the Dutch central government

“…Moreover, the few articles that do propose separate roles for change agents are often vague (Kaarst-Brown 1999) or abstract (Caldwell 2003). And, even worse, there is little research studying the roles and practices of internal change agents at all (Balogun, Gleadle, Hope Hailey, & Willmott 2005). Therefore, we would like to extend Markus and Benjamin's (1996) framework with a number of studies in the field of organizational intervention (Chin & Benne 1961;Huy 2001) and also take a side-step into the social intervention literature (Warwick & Kelman 1973).…”