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was not autonomous as such, since major program-related decisions were
made in the line organization’s decision-making forums by Chain’s line
managers. Still, the program seemed to possess the necessary authority due
to its well-working management system that linked the program to the line
organization’s authority. Chain’s program involved authority via the
program owner’s and steering group members’ high-ranking organizational
positions. Central managers of Domain (the main business division
involved in the program) were responsible for the program’s development
areas and also members in the program steering group where major
decisions related to the program’s projects were made. The program
coordinator and the program owner guarded the program’s decisionmaking
system actively and made sure that it was not bypassed. The
program coordinator’s authority also increased as he was formally
appointed the program manager. The program manager described the
program’s authority in the following manner:
Q52 (Chain, program manager): “The prerequisite for me to accept this position
was to have a well-functioning project portfolio management process for
making decisions about the projects. That process may not be bypassed; the
program simply cannot take any of that. So if the CEO asks some project to do
something, we need to all agree that no one will act until we have discussed that
in the program steering group, considered the effects and made a formal
decision … If the CEO asked to put a project on hold, it would of course be put on
hold. But not just by his request, but only after it had been decided in the
steering group. … Everyone gets the idea, and I’m very satisfied with how this
works.”
To sum up the situation of Chain’s program, the overall readiness for
change program implementation was judged as high, and the program was
able to proceed to implementation. People were in general pleased with the
program’s progress, although some thought that the insufficient
involvement of the local unit personnel during the early stage might cause
unforeseen challenges for implementation. There was in general a strong
belief that the program was on the right track and making progress.
4.4.3 Comparison of the findings across the cases
As can be seen from the descriptions in the previous section, there were
considerable differences across the cases in terms of the readiness for
change program implementation. Table 16 summarizes the differences. For
each of the three cases, each indicator of readiness for change is assessed to
be either fully present (“Yes” in Table 16), somewhat present (“Yes to some
extent”) or lacking (“No”), depending on the frequency of the occurrences
of supporting and controverting interviewee statements and other
observations identified in the data. To summarize the findings, an overall
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