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

Research methodology and data
characterization and evaluation of the selected research methods is also
required.
3.2 Research approach
The aim of the research and the nature of the research questions affect the
choice of the appropriate research strategy. The purpose of the current
study is to explore how the boundary between an emerging program and its
parent organization is managed during change program initiation. As the
research questions presented in the previous chapter indicate, the research
includes both descriptive and explanatory elements. The aim is to depict
what happens in program initiation by providing an in-depth description of
the emerging boundary between a program and its parent organization
(RQ1), boundary activities at that boundary (RQ2), and indicators of
readiness for change program implementation (RQ3). The research also
aims to reveal associations between the boundary activities and readiness
for change (RQ4), and provide explanations for these observations by
identifying key contextual factors that affect the investigated phenomenon
(RQ5).
As described in the literature review, previous research has not explicitly
addressed boundary management of early-stage change programs, although
related issues have been studied either from other perspectives or in other
contexts. Due to the nature of the research questions and the early stage of
theory development in the field, a quantitative approach that would build
on theory testing is not suitable for the current study. Instead, the current
study follows the qualitative paradigm. Unlike purely inductive research
that builds on empirical observations and is ideally free from prior
theoretical frameworks and ideas, the present study is informed of the
previous research, applying concepts such as boundary activities and
readiness for change introduced by earlier studies. The aim of the present
study is to extend the existing theoretical understanding by studying the
dynamics of change program initiation in the interaction between empirical
data and existing theory.
The chosen research approach can best be characterized as an abductive
multiple case study (Dubois & Gadde, 2002). Abduction provides an
alternative to the traditional choices of scientific inference, deduction and
induction. Deductive research is a theory testing process that starts with a
general law or theory and applies that to specific empirical observations to
test whether the theory applies to those instances. Inductive research starts
from empirical observations and aims to make a generalization based on
them to create new theory. Pure induction without theoretical reference can
prevent the research from benefiting from earlier research findings,
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