Managing Change Across Boundaries: Boundary‐Shaking Practices1
| Author | Julia Balogun,Hugh Willmott,Veronica Hope Hailey,Pauline Gleadle |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00463.x |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
Managing Change Across Boundaries:
Boundary-Shaking Practices
1
Julia Balogun, Pauline Gleadle
*
, Veronica Hope Haileyw
and Hugh Willmottz
Cass Business School, City University, 106 Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8TZ,
*
Open University Business School,
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, wSchool of Management, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY,
zJudge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1AG UK.
e-mail: j.balogun@city.ac.uk [Balogun]; Pauline@sgleadle.freeserve.co.uk [Gleadle];
v.h.hailey@bath.ac.uk [Hope]; h.willmott@jims.cam.ac.uk [Willmott]
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.
Introduction
To date, boundary spanning has primarily been
conceived as an activity performed to relate an
organization to its environment, and to other
organizations with which it cooperates and
competes, with attention to issues such as
buffering and bridging strategies (Scott, 1998),
and more recently knowledge transfer (e.g.
Rosenkopf and Nerkar, 2001). By comparison,
there is little research on the practices of internal
change agency and boundary spanning to imple-
ment change initiatives across internal organiza-
tional boundaries. In fact, there is little research
studying the roles and practices of internal
change agents at all, as most studies are
preoccupied with ‘leadership’ (Hartley, Benning-
ton and Binns, 1997).
2
This study examines the boundary-spanning
practices involved in working across multiple
intra-organizational boundaries (functional, divi-
sional, national, cultural) to implement centre-led
change in a number of blue-chip organizations in
sectors as diverse as pharmaceuticals, consul-
tancy and engineering. Our focus is on boundary-
shakers – individuals who are tasked with
implementing change across existing internal
1
The authors would like to thank the two anonymous
reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of
this paper.
2
Internal change agents can be distinguished from
leaders in the sense that they have responsibility for
implementing change, but without the sanctioned
authority of business leaders.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 16, 261–278 (2005)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00463.x
r2005 British Academy of Management
organizational boundaries, in ways that simulta-
neously alter those boundaries. We refer to such
change activity as boundary-shaking as it can in-
volve reconfiguring, if not removing, the bound-
aries, but also reconfiguring the ways in which
work and interactions flow across these bound-
aries. Boundary-shakers are worthy of research in
their own right as increasingly organizations seek
economies of scale and scope through mergers,
acquisitions and alliances, with an accompanying
search to integrate and harmonize ways of
working and exploit synergies as part of the
constant tension between HQ centralization and
decentralization (Ferlie and Pettigrew, 1996).
Existing literature reveals the importance of,
yet lack of attention to, power and change
agency, and in particular a lack of understanding
about the context-dependency of change agency
(Buchanan, 1999; Buchanan & Badham, 1999;
Hardy, 1994, 1996; Hartley, Bennington and
Binns, 1997). Our central research concern is to
elucidate the practices of boundary-shakers as
they attempt to engage with others and enrol
them to their cause. Drawing on a diverse range
of centre-led change initiatives, including
post-merger integration, exploitation of across
business synergies, and implementing more inte-
grative structures, we explore boundary-shaking
practices in context by appreciating the contin-
gency of their emergence and development. To
this end, we engage a micro-political perspective
on politics and power thatilluminates the manage-
ment of meaning (Pettigrew, 1985; Pfeffer, 1981)
and the relevance of dramaturgical metaphors
(Mangham, 1978, 1986). Our findings show
boundary-shakers to be manipulators of existing
organizational networks, gathering and using
knowledge of the organizational political context
and the motivations of others to pursue their
change objectives. This enables us to contribute to
the debate on change agency and change agent
skills and practices with particular reference to
those engaged in boundary-shaking activities.
We first review the literature relating to power,
politics and change agency. Next we describe our
methodology and the organizations involved in
the research. We then present our findings to
show how boundary-shakers (1) engage with those
whom they seek to enrol as participants in their
change initiatives, as well as those whose tacit
support is essential to success; and (2) reduce con-
straints to implementation within their context of
practice. We conclude with the implications of
our findings for future research and practice.
Boundary spanning and change agency
Boundary spanning has received considerable
attention. In the 1970s and 1980s there was a
focus inter alia on the boundary spanning activi-
ties of specialists (e.g. sales and product man-
agers) (Lysonski, 1985; Lysonski and Johnson,
1983), both inter and intra-organizational bound-
ary spanning activity in specialist (e.g. R&D)
environments (Tushman and Katz, 1980; Tush-
man and Scanlan, 1981a, 1981b), and the impact
of boundary spanning on strategic decision-
making/firm performance (Aldrich and Herker,
1977; Dollinger, 1984; Jemison, 1984; Leifer and
Delbecq, 1978). Subsequently, interest shifted
towards boundary spanning behaviour associated
with strategic alliances and knowledge manage-
ment (e.g. Rosenkopf and Nerkar, 2001), with
boundary spanners who act as an interface or
mediator between the organization and its
environment (Leifer and Delbecq, 1978) continu-
ing to receive most attention. Much less interest
has been taken in internal boundary spanners,
with the exception of studies directed at R&D
functions which have the role of linking their
subunit to other organizational functional areas
(Katz and Tushman, 1979; Tushman and Scan-
lan, 1981a, 1981b; Nochur and Allen, 1992).
Yet, many people are involved in working
across interorganizational boundaries in their
day-to-day work. Some manage across depart-
mental and geographic boundaries as part of
their line management responsibilities. Specialists
who sit within corporate functions, such as
finance or human resources, also manage across
boundaries to support line activities. Our focus
here is on boundary spanners who are charged
with making changes that involve or necessitate
shaking boundaries, as opposed to boundary-
spanning activity that is predominantly geared
to maintenance.
The focus on lists of skills for internal change
agents, rather than on understanding their roles,
activities and performance (Hartley, Bennington
and Binns, 1997), means that there is little
empirical research that engages with the roles
and practices of these individuals, let alone
those specifically engaged in boundary-shaking
262 Balogun et al.
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