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Managing Change Across Boundaries: Boundary‐Shaking Practices1

Article  in  British Journal of Management · October 2005

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00463.x

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British Journal of Management, Vol. 16, 261–278 (2005)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00463.x

Managing Change Across Boundaries:

Boundary-Shaking Practices1
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 studying the roles and practices of internal

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
1
The authors would like to thank the two anonymous
reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of
this paper.
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
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.

r 2005 British Academy of Management

262
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 that illuminates 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
Balogun et al.
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
Managing Change Across Boundaries
change initiatives. There is, for example, a body
of research that addresses change agent compe-
tencies (see Buchanan and Boddy, 1992). This
work shows that for internal change agents
interpersonal, networking and influencing skills
are key, particularly when they have no clear
mandated power (Buchanan and Badham, 1999;
Buchanan, Claydon and Doyle, 1999; Hartley,
Bennington and Binns, 1997). Yet we still know
little about the ‘lived experience’ of change agents
(Buchanan, Claydon and Doyle, 1999), or the
practices of change agents within context (Porras
and Robertson, 1985). At the same time, the
traditional notions of the mandated or dedicated
‘change agent’ – an internal or external profes-
sional employed to manage change – are eroding
(Doyle, 2002; La Marsh, 1995; Rosenfeld and
Wilson, 1999) as many other employees are urged
to embrace change and to take responsibility for
enabling and managing it. Such change agents
often have line responsibilities in addition to their
change responsibilities, with managers fulfilling a
‘hybrid’ functional and change agency role
(Buchanan, Claydon and Doyle, 1999).
Existing research points to the political nature
of change agency (Hardy, 1994). However, whilst
politics is no longer the ‘ugly duckling’ of
organizational theory (Czarniawska-Joerges and
Jacobsson, 1995), the literature on change agency
displays what Buchanan and Badham (1999,
p. 609) describe as an ‘ambivalent’ approach to
political behaviour. This has been attributed,
among other things, to traditional organization
theory’s emphasis on cooperation and collabora-
tion at the expense of ignoring ‘the darker side of
humanity’ (Mangham, 1979, p. 15). Yet power
and politics are integral to organizational and
strategic change (Dawson, 1994; Hardy, 1994,
1996; Kanter, 1983; Pettigrew, 1973, 1975, 1985).
Politics is an inescapable organizational activity
(Buchanan, 1999; Tantoush and Clegg, 2001),
and its presence becomes more evident in condi-
tions of uncertainty and conflict. Change agents,
of necessity, are involved in power and politics
and boundary-shakers are no different. The very
nature of their work involves them in working
across organizational power domains, and we
have evidence that change agents working in
these circumstances need to rely on influencing
tactics (Hartley, Bennington and Binns, 1997).
When change projects require organizational
boundary spanning, the use of networks to
263
exercise influence is important (Ibarra, 1993).
But what form does this political activity take?
Hardy (1994, 1995) argues that within research
into change agency, and management studies of
power in general, a functionalist approach tends
to dominate in which politics is seen as the functi-
onally bestowed and uncontested exercise of
power. Power is viewed as legitimate when
exercised by managers to pursue collective orga-
nizational goals, but dysfunctional when used by
others to challenge those goals and/or promote
self-interest (Hardy and Clegg, 1996). Hardy
(1985, 1994, 1996) distinguishes between the
power of resources, power of processes and power
of meaning. Resource power is to do with overt
decision-making. Power is enacted through the use
of resources, such as funds, information or
credibility, and it is to do with the capacity to
hire, fire, reward, punish, provide funds/authority/
expertise and so on (Hardy, 1985). We will show
how boundary-shakers had differential capacities
to mobilize such resources. The second dimension
is the power of process. By controlling the agendas
for meetings, for example, subordinates are
effectively prevented from participating and there-
fore influence decision-making. Our boundary-
shakers found themselves constrained but also
enabled by processes that they were able to enlist
or divert for their purposes. The third dimension is
the power of meaning or symbolic power. Also
described as the management of meaning (Petti-
grew, 1985; Pfeffer, 1981), this involves the use of
symbols, rituals, language and co-option, for
example, to shape perceptions, cognitions and
preferences. It is a process of symbol construction
and use deigned to legitimize one’s own actions
and delegitimate those of opponents (Pettigrew,
1992). Symbolic power involves an unobtrusive
‘ability to define reality, not only for oneself, but
for others’ (Hardy, 1985, p. 390). It is more about
inhibiting opposition or getting cooperation than
defeating declared opponents. It is less about
agenda-setting, for example, than shaping the
language and thought processes through which
any agenda item is examined. The notion of
dramaturgical power (Mangham, 1986) illumi-
nates the management of meaning insofar as
individuals are conceived to be performers or
actors on a stage, presenting a (different)
character to various audiences, inviting them to
believe in the reality of the setting, props, cues
and so on (Clark, 1995; Mangham, 1978).
264
So far, however, we have conceived of power in
terms of a (relatively) autonomous subject (e.g.
change agent) who mobilizes different dimensions
of power in the form of ‘resources’, ‘processes’
and ‘meaning’. This formulation largely excludes
consideration of how subjects are an effect of
power, in the sense that they/we are constructed
by ‘resources, ‘processes’ and ‘meanings’. One
example of such construction is the taken-for-
granted or naturalized acceptance of received
wisdom, including an acceptance of existing
organizational cultures, values, traditions, struc-
tures and practices. Hardy (1994, 1996) refers to
this as the power of the system to capture the
constraining nature of existing reifications of
power. Power is not something that people
‘possess’, but rather something that exists rela-
tionally (Clegg, 1989; Mangham, 1986).
The dynamic and shifting nature of power in
organizations is explored by various perspectives,
including actor network theory (Callon, 1986;
Latour, 1987), in which consideration is given to
the ‘power of the system’, in the form of
networks, as well as to the role of actors in
reproducing and transforming these networks.
Actors are effects of networks, hence the im-
portance attributed to what we will call the
‘context’ of action. Interests exist as ‘temporarily
stabilised outcomes of previous processes of
enrolment’ (Callon and Law, 1982, p. 622). Actor
network theory in particular is concerned with
‘translation’, the methods by which these out-
comes, either intentionally or otherwise, are
achieved (Clegg, 1989; Hardy, Phillips and Clegg,
2001).
It is against this stabilization and naturaliza-
tion of the status quo that individuals must act if
they are to deliver change. We position the
ongoing political strategies and tactics of change
agents within the context of their manoeuvrings,
and consider how they mobilize organizational
and tactical knowledge to manipulate the context
to their advantage (Buchanan, 1999; Buchanan
and Storey, 1997). Boundary-shakers, we argue,
are individuals involved in translation, endea-
vouring to mobilize others to support their cause.
We therefore set out to examine the practices of
boundary-shakers as they attempt to enrol others
to their cause, and how the organizational
contexts in which the boundary-shakers are
working affect these practices. In doing so, we
emphasize that boundary-shakers do not operate
Balogun et al.
as sovereign individuals but, rather, are consti-
tuted within networks and are obliged to enlist
the power of these networks in order to
accomplish the purposes that they have acquired
in the process of participating in the reproduction
and transformation of those networks. As such,
whereas other research on change agency often
cites ‘networking’ as a key change agent compe-
tence (for example, Buchanan and Boddy, 1992;
Hartley, Bennington and Binns, 1997), we take
for granted the integral nature of networks within
organizational contexts and instead focus on how
networking occurs, whilst acknowledging that
boundary-shakers are hostages to the very net-
works they seek to transform. Our intent is not to
contribute to the debate on power within
organizational theory, but to build on existing
research on internal change agency through more
recent writings on power and a focus on
boundary-shakers to illuminate better our com-
prehension of what these individuals do and how.
We therefore focus on human actors, despite the
dual emphasis in perspectives such as actor
network theory on human and non-human
actants, and view our boundary-shakers as
knowledgeable, although not sovereign, agents.3
Methodology
This study has been conducted as part of an
ongoing research agenda with a consortium of
companies interested in illuminating issues relat-
ing to the management of change. These compa-
nies were increasingly involved in implementing
centre-led change initiatives across increasingly
complex organizational boundaries, usually
prompted by expansions and/or competitive pres-
sures. The research was initiated in seven organi-
zations competing in a variety of different sectors
– pharmaceuticals, consultancy, engineering,
telecommunications, banking and computing.
Within each organization we needed to select
individuals to participate that met our definition
of boundary-shakers. First, boundary-shakers
are individuals tasked with implementing, across
the broader organization, corporate centre
3
Like others (Hardy, Phillips and Clegg, 2001; Newton,
1996) with our focus on human agency we adopt a more
conventional approach than would be normal in papers
that make reference to actor network theory, drawing on
actor network theory in a selective manner.
Managing Change Across Boundaries
change initiatives that require realignment of, or
challenge to, existing internal organizational
boundaries if the changes are to be successful.
These initiatives may require some level of
restructuring, such as the integration of pre-
viously autonomous divisions or groups so that
old boundaries disappear. Alternatively these
initiatives may require cooperation between
stand-alone divisions and therefore a shift in
attitudes about working relationships. In addi-
tion these initiatives could involve the implemen-
tation of new organization-wide systems to
replace existing division specific systems to create
greater compatibility and economies of scale.
Second, the boundary-shakers may come from
corporate-level functions, or belong to the divi-
sions undergoing change. However, whatever
their formal organizational role, to deliver
change they have to draw together and get
cooperation from others whose assumptions
about ways of working, and maybe personal
interests, are being challenged by the change
initiative. Third, as internal change agents, the
boundary-shakers typically have no sanctioned
authority over many of those they are asking to
cooperate, and may be dealing with individuals
more senior than themselves.
Within each organization, therefore, we identi-
fied a particular centre-led change initiative that
required realignment of existing organizational
boundaries, and three individuals who had
responsibility for delivery of that change initia-
tive and met our definition of boundary shakers.4
This created a multiple and embedded compara-
tive case design (Yin, 1994), with seven organiza-
tional case studies, and within that a larger
number of individual case studies, enabling a
contextual investigation of the research phenom-
enon. We selected the change initiatives carefully
to explore boundary shaking across a range of
different organizational boundaries. In each
organization we either had a separate organiza-
tional narrator who provided background on the
overall context, content and progress of the
change initiative, or one of our boundary-shakers
fulfilled this role.
We set up the research to be conducted over at
least six months where possible. Recognizing that
4
Three individuals were selected in each organization to
allow for the likelihood of some dropping-out of the
research.
265
people can find it hard to articulate what they do
when they are divorced from the context of
action (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Suchman, 1987),
and that we could not use participant observation
for such a large number of geographically
dispersed research subjects given the limited
resources at our disposal, we considered techni-
ques that encourage participant self-reflection,
such as diaries, focus groups and participant
research (Balogun, Huff and Johnson, 2003).
There was also a limit to the amount of time and
effort we could ask our research participants to
devote to the project. Focus groups were feasible
and useful, as these can have memory-jogging
and snowballing effects (Edwards and Middleton,
1986; Hinsz, 1990; Stewart and Shamdasani,
1990), especially when they comprise groups of
similarly engaged practitioners.
The research progressed in three phases –
primarily as a result of the impact of the changing
economic circumstances of the period of study
(April–December 2001) on the organizations
involved. First individual interviews with the
organizational narrators and boundary-shakers
served to establish the change context in each
organization, and the particular change-related
responsibilities and context of the individual
boundary-shakers. We also discussed with the
boundary-shakers the steps they were taking to
implement their boundary-shaking change initia-
tives and the issues they were encountering. Each
initial semi-structured interview lasted about an
hour. We then ran a set of cross-company focus
groups, at which the boundary spanners were
encouraged to reflect on their practices, what was
hindering and facilitating them in their roles, the
issues they were encountering and how they were
tackling these issues. The organizations were
divided into two groups. The boundary-shakers
from four organizations participated in one
group. The first focus group only involved three
organizations, but one organization then with-
drew from the consortium after the first meeting,
and the fourth organization was then brought
into the second focus-group meeting to replace
them. The remaining three organizations partici-
pated in a focus group that met once. Each focus
group lasted for about three hours. Participants
were initially put into company groups to discuss
their boundary-shaking practices, and were then,
using feedback from these in-company groups as
a starting point, brought together to discuss their
266
practices. All in-company and cross-company
group discussions were monitored by a facilita-
tor, taped and transcribed, as were all interviews.
Following September 11th 2001 and the gen-
eral economic situation, another company
withdrew from the research consortium, and
re-structuring and other initiatives within two
more of the organizations either moved our
boundary-shakers into different roles or out of
the organization. Subsequently we concentrated
on the three remaining companies (fortunately all
from the same focus group). In all of these
organizations, we re-interviewed our organiza-
tional narrators on the progress of the change
initiatives, and carried out final interviews with
our boundary-shakers. We spoke to only two
boundary-shakers in each organization as, for a
variety of reasons, (e.g. maternity leave and
voluntary redundancies), and as predicted, we
lost some of our participants. In one organization
(subsequently referred to as Engco) we conducted
straightforward individual interviews, each last-
ing about one-and-a-half hours. In another
(subsequently referred to as Pharma) we con-
ducted a final focus group with all three
boundary-shakers and then conducted individual
interviews with two of these. In the third
organization (subsequently referred to as Con-
sult) we brought an additional boundary-shaker
into our research. We undertook what is best
described as a group interview, in which we
interviewed our boundary-shakers together over
a period of about two-and-a-half hours, encoura-
ging them to discuss their initiatives, practices
and progress with each other. In these interviews
and focus groups we again concentrated on the
progress the boundary-shakers were making,
their practices, their issues and how they were
dealing with them. Again, all focus groups and
interviews were taped and transcribed.
Our analysis draws on all the data collected
from the seven organizations throughout the
period of research. The data presented in this
paper comes from the three organizations that
participated in the research from the beginning to
the end, since we have more data on the outcome
of the boundary-shakers’ interventions, and
draws on the data collected through the inter-
views and focus groups. These three organiza-
tions were in diverse sectors – pharmaceuticals
(Pharma), engineering (Engco) and consultancy
(Consult). The first two are multinational orga-
Balogun et al.
nizations, although we focused on the UK
operations, and the consultancy organization is
a partnership. Pharma was in the process of
creating a single organization out of two merged
organizations. Our contacts were in the HR
function of the UK commercial company. Wendy
(all names used here are pseudonyms), the HR
Director and a member of the UK Commercial
Senior Management Team, was involved in
setting-up and negotiating the relationships for
the UK Commercial Division between the
different HR groups (Europe, Corporate Centre,
Shared Services Functions) within the recently
merged and re-structured organization. Beth, an
OD Manager, reports to Wendy, and was
involved in implementing a series of merger-
related initiates to create a unified organization.
Engco was running a large change project
consisting of several sub-projects aimed at creat-
ing cross-business synergies between its diverse
business divisions. William, who was group head
of remuneration and benefits, worked partly as
an internal consultant to examine across-business
practices in areas such as pensions, with the aim
of creating common procedures and using
common providers where possible. Jane was
running an innovation project to encourage the
development of new business ideas from the
divisions. Consult was in the process of changing
its previous functional structure to an industry
group structure in which the old service lines had
to work together to offer a more seamless and
value added service to clients. George was the
partner in charge of one of the new industry
groups. Emma reported to him, and worked to
create integration of the service lines within the
industry group.
Data analysis
Our analysis proceeded in several stages. The first
two authors conducted the interviews and focus
groups, which were all recorded and transcribed.
From cross-reading of the transcripts early ideas
of the likely importance of efforts to develop
support networks were confirmed. Despite this
focus on power and politics, however, we still
took an inductive approach to our data analysis
to develop themes that could describe the context
and practices of boundary-shaking in more
general terms (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). The
Managing Change Across Boundaries 267

second author was tasked with conducting two
separate, in-depth analyses of the data. The first
analysis examined the practices used by our
boundary-shakers to enrol people to their cause
as they travelled around their organization and
attempted to draw others in and get them
involved. This initially involved extracting all
sections to do with ‘getting others on board’ from
the focus group and interview transcripts, where
this was broadly defined as any event, activity or
action used by the boundary-shakers to encou-
rage others (peers, seniors and juniors) to be
more supportive of, or more involved in, the
changes. These sections were then read and
annotated with emergent themes, and then
gradually grouped together to form broader key
themes (Miles and Huberman, 1994) about
boundary-shaking practices. Initial themes were
then discussed with the other authors and early
categories refined to obtain five categories of
practices (see Box 1). Box 1 reveals that most of
the identified boundary-shaking practices are to
do with the power of meaning – aligning agendas,
engaging in stage management, and gathering
intelligence. These practices are consistent with
Hardy’s (1985) notion of an unobtrusive ability to
define reality. Adjustment of measurement sys-
tems is an example of resource power, whereas
managing up requires some level of process
power. Yet if used to gain cooperation rather
than defeat others, these practices are also more
to do with unobtrusive power.
The second analysis examined how the orga-
nizational contexts within which the boundary-
shakers were working differed. This analysis exa-
mined the transcripts for comments about the
impact of the organizational contexts of opera-
tion on the activities of the boundary-shakers.
Again, these comments were grouped into themes
about the different contexts, and once more these
themes were discussed with the other authors and
refined into four dimensions. The organizations
varied by the degree to which the different
divisions constituted autonomous (high-level)
networks with separate identities and ways of
doing things. The different networks were bound
together by a common set of managerial prio-
rities, which in turn impacted on the financial
management and reporting systems, and reward
and performance management systems (see Box
2). These relationships, priorities and measures
illustrate the presence of Hardy’s (1994, 1996)
concept of the power of the system. Organiza-
tional members are subject to historical and
taken-for-granted precedents as to who has
power through resources, process and meaning.
We begin with three vignettes focusing on one
boundary spanner from each of our three
organizational case studies, to illustrate the
practices they engaged in and how their different
organization contexts affected their network-
building activities. Drawing on the themes we
have identified from our analysis, we show how
different boundary-shakers are either constrained
or enabled by the existing power of the system
within their organizations, and, again using the
categories identified from our analysis, how they
utilize resource, process and symbolic power, but

Box 1. Boundary-shaking practices

Adjusting measurement
systems
Aligning agendas/selling
Engaging in stage
management
Gathering intelligence
Managing up
Bringing in new measurement systems (rewards, objectives, for example) or getting existing
measurement systems changed to encourage individuals to support the change initiative.
Using meetings (specially arranged and others opportunistically), conferences, one-to-ones,
e-mails, newsletters and many types of formal and informal communications to persuade and
convince people of the merit of the change initiative and to cooperate/help. Also involves
selling the change initiative to others in a way that fits with their agendas/issues.
Manipulating situations in particular ways to ensure a message is delivered more effectively.
For example, setting up meetings or discussions in a particular way, such as use of experts to
reinforce particular points, or deliberately creating a particular self- image or impression, or
making visible the added value of their work to others. Stage management may also require
recognizing the different identities of the individuals they are working across when trying to
bring them together.
Finding out the agendas/issues of others – both junior and senior – to feed into managing up,
stage management and aligning agendas/selling.
Lobbying for help from more senior managers, getting support of more senior managers for
intended interventions/courses of action, developing/using senior-manager sponsors, develop-
ing initiatives that tie in with/support the interests of more senior managers.
268 Balogun et al.

Box 2. Organizational context of practice

Local autonomy:
Managerial priorities:
Reward/performance
management systems:
Financial measurement/
reporting systems:
The extent to which the different communities within the organization form networks of in-
terest associated with a strong individual identity, systems, ways of working, history of auto-
nomy and freedom to act on their own.
Organizational and senior management preferences about where effort should be expended
e.g. short-term profitability at the expense of longer-term more strategic concerns, and the
extent to which this supports or mitigates against boundary-shaking change initiatives.
The basis on which individuals are rewarded, assessed and promoted, and the extent to which
these systems can be utilized locally to support projects of boundary-shakers and incentivize
adoption.
The emphasis in terms of the financial measurement systems, and the extent to which these
systems encourage others to work with boundary-shakers on their change projects.

primarily symbolic power, to overcome the
constraints imposed on them by this power of
the system. In the presentation of these vignettes
we move from what we identify as a compara-
tively enabled context to a more constrained
context in order to show how, as the context
becomes more restrictive, boundary-shakers en-
deavour to draw on their practices to build
networks upwards, laterally and downwards,
thereby enabling them to alter their context of
operation (the power of the system) in ways
which extend their discretion. They deploy their
knowledge of the context and the motivations of
others to create new networks (or new meanings
within old networks), which then enable them to
pursue their change objectives. We conclude by
comparing the different boundary-shaking prac-
tices employed in each of the three cases.
Three case studies
Box 2 identifies four dimensions of organization
context that could enable or constrain boundary-
shakers as they attempted to build networks
supportive of their change cause. We use these
dimensions of local autonomy, managerial prio-
rities, reward/performance management systems,
and financial measurement and reporting sys-
tems, to present and compare our three cases and
show how the historical and taken-for-granted
power of the system differentially enables of
constrains the boundary-shakers in their particu-
lar change tasks.
Pharma: delivering change in an enabled context
Following the merger of Oldpharma1 with Old-
pharma2 to create the new Pharma, the senior
management of the merged UK Commercial
Division went to great lengths to emphasize that
the new organization would be totally different
from the two predecessor companies, despite the
cultural differences. This led to a number of
initiatives, some local to the UK Commercial
Division, such as a cultural-change programme,
and others originating from the corporate centre,
to facilitate the merger. It also provided an
enabled organizational context for Beth and
Wendy as the emphasis from senior management
on crafting an altogether new organization
minimized any effects of local parochialism
between OldPharma1 and OldPharma2 within
UK Commercial. Moreover, the different busi-
ness teams did not have a history of strong
individual identities; HR was integrated into the
business, with a member of HR on every business
leadership team; the managerial priorities were
strongly focused on completing the merger and
initiatives that supported it; and the reward and
performance management systems in general
formed part of the integration initiative. Wendy
and her team were involved in the evolution of
the reporting systems locally through HR’s
integration with the various management teams,
although of course many of the financial and
reporting systems were set centrally to support
the completion of the merger. As actors within an
existing network, HR were able to draw on their
participation in a wider set of social relations to
push forward their agenda.
Beth was involved in many of the merger
initiatives. Her role often involved interpretation
of what was communicated globally from the
corporate centre in a way that could be used
locally. The existing power of the system typically
supported the implementation of these initiatives
and HRs involvement. Beth was able to work
within, and even exploit, the existing system to
Managing Change Across Boundaries
obtain buy-in and support for her initiatives. She
generally used a cascade process for implementa-
tion, facilitated by the enabled context in which
she worked. A global initiative on performance
development planning (PDP) illustrates this. PDP
encompassed an objective-setting process (what
staff have to deliver in a particular role), a
capability process (how staff are going to do this)
and development planning (supports the skills
and knowledge to do both of these), which fit
together as an overall process. To implement
PDP in UK Commercial, Beth worked directly
with the senior management team, as she had
their commitment to merger initatives and the
access to do so, and then line HR staff worked
with each individual vice president and their
business unit leadership teams. The objective-
setting process was rolled out first as this was
important in building the new Pharma. The new
organization was giving out very strong messages
around ‘We will pay for performance’. Beth
argued that ‘Especially when at the same time
you are giving out very strong messages that
the new organization will pay for performance -
so what is performance? Your performance is
against your objectives - so what are those
objectives? So it was fairly easy to quickly
get people to understand the need for having
objectives’.
Beth started by writing a simple-to-understand
presentation about what Pharma meant by
objectives, and how the system was to work.
She engaged the UK senior management team
with this, with the result that the President
went away and wrote his objectives, as did the
senior VPs. Each VP in the senior management
team together with a member of HR then gave
the same presentation to their leadership teams.
This process was then cascaded down the
hierarchy. Since the HR managers were inte-
grated into the business leadership teams, at their
weekly meetings they were able to remind
managers about keeping objective setting on the
agenda.
Beth engaged in few network-building activ-
ities due to the integrated nature of HR within
the business, and the process power this existing
power of the system extended to her, to Wendy
and to her HR colleagues. Wendy’s position on
the senior management team, and Beth’s direct
access to senior managers, positioned each of
them within existing networks of shared meaning
269
as far as the merger initiatives were concerned.
However, Beth worked to reinforce her message
lower down the organization in various ways,
including individual discussion with managers,
use of the organizational newsletter, exhibitions
in the coffee area, presentations, information
packs and brochures and use of the HR website.
In such ways she sought to gain acceptance and
implementation of initiatives such as PDP.
Consult: informally working through a constrained
context
In response to perceived client pressures requiring
more integrated business expertise, the partner-
ship, Consult, a consultancy organization, was
moving away from its traditional stress on service
lines (here described as recruitment, executive
coaching, outplacement) to a matrix in which the
different service lines were to be aligned more
closely together in client-facing industry groups.
The focus of our study was the NW industry
group. So far, the creation of the NW group had
concentrated on bringing outplacement and
executive coaching together, although the inten-
tion was also to include recruitment. The intent
was for Consult to become much more client-
centric so that there would be one person,
whether an outplacement or an executive coach-
ing partner, who ‘owns the overall relationship
with the client’, with this individual being
responsible for ensuring that the full portfolio
of services was introduced to that account. As
part of this initiative, Consult staff were expected
to become ‘trusted business advisers’ for clients –
to become the first port of call for a range of
services, rather than simply being specialist
technicians, as in the past.
Consult exhibited a constrained organizational
context for this industry group change initiative,
primarily as a result of the traditional partnership
culture of local autonomy. Professional staff have
traditionally been committed to their specialist
service lines and their local office rather than to
industry groups. Partners ran their own ‘tribes’
without integration with others. George talked of
his efforts in the implementation of NW as
‘management by stealth’. The partners tradition-
ally focused on growing the profit, and ring-
fencing, of their own business within service lines.
As a result, reporting had centred on profit,
270
broken down by service line with industry group
targets as vague sales targets only. During
internal presentations service line targets were
stressed at the expense of the industry group
targets. In addition, reward structures were
decided at a company level where service line,
rather than industry group, affiliation was
emphasized. However, individual scorecards, a
form of objective-based assessment, were now
being implemented. This allowed for some local
objective setting. Partners were also involved in
decisions about who was promoted.
As such, the power of the system traditionally
rested with partners within service lines and did
not facilitate cross-service line initiatives.
Furthermore, Emma, who was informally ap-
pointed by George to her role of furthering the
industry group integration and not a partner, had
limited resource and process power within the
existing power of the system. She and George had
a shared understanding and purpose in the
forging of the industry group, but this objective
was not always shared by the other partners. To
push the change agenda forwards, she had to
draw the other partners within the industry group
into her change-related projects and to convince
them of the merit of her actions, thereby creating
an informal mandate for herself. This informal
mandate led her to engage in a broad range of
practices to maintain partnership relationships
and create new across-industry group networks
through which she sought to bring about further
industry group consolidation. Many of her
initiatives have been targeted at particular
individuals, but have also required them to
involve others, to broaden the level of involve-
ment. So, for example, she would give an
individual specific responsibility that necessarily
involves cooperation with others:
So I have got a line manager that assumes
responsibility for that (i.e. staff entertainment) but
it doesn’t mean to say that she does it all by herself,
she has a net underneath her. The easy example of
this is the social committee. One of my managers is
responsible for entertainment so . . . I go to him but
I know he has a social committee underneath him.
(Emma, Consult)
Engco: an impossible context?
Within Engco the different divisions operated as
silos. Historically, they were autonomous and
Balogun et al.
parochial, with strong individual identities, ac-
countable only to the centre in terms of ‘bottom-
line’ targets. The power base rested with the
divisional general managers. There were no
communication mechanisms that reached across
the 200 or so relevant managers in the divisions.
Implementing centre-led change initiatives was
therefore very difficult, particularly given the
tradition of there being no central mandate for
such initiatives, making participation by the
divisions effectively voluntary. Managerial prio-
rities centred on the achievement of hard targets,
such as cash and profits. The reward systems
could not be used to enforce change initiatives.
They were set on bottom-line divisional, short-
term performance. The organization could speak
with a ‘forked tongue’, according to one of the
boundary-shakers – ‘we want you to do this, but
we will measure/reward you on this’. The
financial reporting systems also had a divisional
bottom-line focus. This created a very con-
strained context of operation for both William
and Jane. Just as the traditional power of the
system did not facilitate cross-service line initia-
tives at Consult, at Engco the existing power of
the system did not facilitate cross-divisional
initiatives.
An interest in developing more consistent
policies on issues to do with Remuneration and
Benefits accompanied the changing shape of the
Engco Group, with expansion in the USA and
continental Europe, in contrast to the UK. Part
of William’s role was to design appropriate
across-division pensions, benefits and healthcare
programmes. Despite his senior manager appoint-
ment, he, like others implementing centre-led
initiatives, had no mandate over the individual
business divisions. William had therefore to
engage in many practices aimed at building a
network of support at board and senior-manage-
ment level, as well as laterally within Engco. Jane
was in the same situation, and potentially at a
disadvantage in comparison to William in terms
of building networks as she was further removed
from the major decision-makers.
Given the existing power of the system, to
progress his initiatives William had to work
within the system, yet simultaneously try to
change it. He did this by re-positioning the way
his initiatives were perceived. William’s support-
building practices were aided by the changing
competitive environment post-September 11th.
Managing Change Across Boundaries
He was able to exploit an increasing cost-
consciousness amongst board members to shape
a context that was more enabling for his work,
and to position himself to work more as a partner
with senior management. He had to tackle three
issues – no central mandate for the central
initiatives, no direct lines of communication with
the divisions due to the local parochialism and no
rewards or incentive mechanisms to reinforce or
incentivize participation.
William created a network of senior support
for his projects by linking these into the business’
cost priorities. Everyone recognized the ‘margin
issues’ facing the business and the priority on
costs. The business issues he tackled enabled him
to get senior management attention as he
presented his task as an issue of ‘simple balance
sheet economics’:
The issue with pensions, for example, is for us
a couple of hundred million pound impact . . . So
that gets senior management attention. . . . In
the US you have very high medical costs . . . 25%
of the profits were related to a cost you need
to control.
Through a persuasive presentation to the board,
William gained agreement for the inclusion of
personal objectives in the incentive programme
for managers, instead of objectives focused on
just profits, for example. This changed the taken-
for-granted assumptions about the way managers
were rewarded. Communications were also
tightened. All the HR Directors had a reporting
relationship with William’s line manager (who in
turn had a reporting relationship to the CEO).
William negotiated for the responsibility for
communication to the divisions to lie with the
divisional HR representatives present at meet-
ings. He supported this through his line manager,
who advised the HR Directors of the commu-
nication responsibilities of their representatives.
As William’s networks within Engco developed,
he was able to widen his access to include the
bosses of his clients, thereby enhancing his access
to decision-makers. Although William still had to
deal with the local parochialism, he now had a
more enabled context through the alignment he
had fostered between his initiatives, the cost-
conscious managerial priorities and the bottom-
line measurement systems, and the agreement
from the board to add personal objectives into
the Engco incentive programme.
271
Boundary-shaking practices
Box 1 identifies five categories of boundary-shaking
practices that we identified from our data
analysis – adjusting measurement systems, align-
ing agendas, engaging in stage management,
gathering intelligence and managing up. These
categories summarize the practices utilized by the
boundary-shakers as they attempted to enrol
others to their change cause. We compare and
contrast the practices of the different boundary-
shakers in our three case studies across these
categories of practice to illustrate the relative use
of resource, process and meaning power across
enabled and more constrained contexts.
Adjusting measurement systems
Beth, at Pharma Commercial, did not seek to
adjust measurement systems as her change
initiative involved the implementation of such
systems. However, both Emma at Consult and
William at Engco worked to engineer changes in
the measurement systems of their organizations
to support their initiatives. This was easier for
Emma than William, as she utilized the introduc-
tion of the balanced scorecard system against
which individuals were to be assessed. Having
first obtained broad partner agreement (a form of
managing up – see below), she created an overall
business scorecard from the Consult business
plan. This both increased the visibility of
allocated responsibilities and introduced an ele-
ment of measurement, ‘So I took the business
plan and converted it into the scorecard . . . and
then I said, okay guys, this is what we have got,
who would like to run what?’. Emma also
capitalized upon the ability of managers in parti-
cular to have non-chargeable activities on their
time sheets by encouraging professional staff to
engage in certain integration activities, such as
social events. She then incorporated this into an
individual’s scorecard, in effect rendering this
measurable.
William at Engco did not have access to any
form of locally adjustable measurement mechan-
isms. He had to forge connections between his
change initiatives and the business imperatives to
persuade the board (again, a form of managing
up) of the need for the incorporation of personal
objectives into the managerial incentive pro-
gramme.
272
Aligning agendas/‘selling’
Beth aligned agendas and ‘sold’ in a variety of
ways. First through use of clarity and simplifica-
tion (although this is also a form of stage
management), ‘The first thing I did was to write
a very simple to understand presentation around
what we meant by objectives - what was an
objective, how they are set, how many are you
supposed to have’. Second, she linked her
initiatives into issues the managers had to deal
with, such as appraising their staff and achieving
the performance element of their pay,
So you said to people that at the end of the year
your performance is going to be measured against
objectives, and it will contribute to a proportion of
your pay. If you have not got your objectives then it
is going to be very difficult to measure. As a line
manager, the argument was pretty compelling
because they are asked to give a rating against their
people as to whether they have achieved or not.
Third, she used ongoing communication, such as
face-to-face discussion and seminars, to persuade
local line managers to own merger initiatives like
PDP, and she used opportunities like regularly
scheduled meetings to remind managers of the
need to progress these initiatives.
Emma spent a lot of time aligning agendas, but
took a more one-to-one approach than Beth. Her
approach appears more manipulative, exploiting
self-interest in others. This reflects the more
constrained context she was working in where it
was necessary to work harder to sell a change
initiative that is not consistent with traditional
managerial priorities. She:

sold the partner recognition that individual
managers got from participation in the
integration initiative;

picked people off individually to explore what
they wanted in career development terms and
tried to accommodate their wishes within the
overall industry group;

used the inside knowledge she had gained in
her capacity as counsellor to allocate work to
individuals in line with industry group objec-
tives;

‘granted favours’ to individuals in terms of
work allocation in return for staff showing
commitment to the industry group;

with a downturn in recruitment and heigh-
tened job insecurity for staff in that group, she
Balogun et al.
made informal approaches to them to en-
courage interest in the industry group.
William, like Beth, engaged in some agenda-
aligning practices that are generic, communica-
tion-based initiatives. He was careful with his use
of words to sell the message and talked of
‘crafting’ presentations,
They have to believe it because they have to sell it,
and it is not a pleasant message for them to hear. So
we start off by saying we did good last year and
made a lot of progress but now things are tougher
we need to take another step. I didn’t just say we
have to save x million, it was more selling than
telling, but not sugar coated. Profit is up and
earnings down so we have margin issues.
This could also be taken as a form of stage
management. However, like Emma, given his
less-supportive organizational context, William
also engaged in a broad range of agenda aligning
practices, and many that were focused on indi-
viduals. He:

sold the need for change by linking his agenda
and activities to the business priorities in view
of external exigencies (‘margin issues’ and
‘business reality’);

he appreciated the agendas of others. For
example, if a middle manager was resistant to
change, William explored the reasons behind
this. If it then turned out that this resistance
in fact originated with the individual’s boss,
William would tailor his message to the boss’
needs, so as to sell to the boss through the
individual;

he invested time up-front in deciding how to
market his activity;

he worked with people individually (‘the ones
who are probably the most vociferous, resist-
ant or have the most personal power’) to get
them on his side before calling people together
to progress things as a team;

he drew on what may seem like apparently un-
related circumstances for his own advantage.
Engaging in stage management
Beth engaged in limited stage-management activ-
ity, although there were aspects of her agenda
aligning and selling practices that included stage
management, such as the way she encouraged
identification with the new Pharma by matching
Managing Change Across Boundaries
any initiatives with the merger aims, and the use
of appropriate language. She tried, for example,
to introduce the concept of an ‘adult-adult’
relationship between management and staff, and
had success in doing so. But, ‘I use it [the
language of ‘adult-adult’ etc.] a lot in talking but
I don’t tend to put it on slides and things, it looks
a bit glib on slides’.
Emma also engaged in stage management
though the language she used. For example, she
subscribed to the industry group message of the
importance of adding value to the client. How-
ever, an additional act of stage management was
to ensure that the managers she was working with
knew that she had the support of the partners for
her actions. All staff were heavily reliant on their
partners for promotions, and would work on
activities of interest to their partners to keep them
happy. Emma also encouraged identification with
the industry group model by giving staff the
opportunity to shape the form it would take,
through running different sets of activities, such
as the staff entertainment referenced above.
William engaged in more complicated acts of
stage management, consistent with his more
constrained context of operation. He drew on
different players to orchestrate clear messages,
for example. One example of this was to quite
consciously play ‘bad cop’, with one of his mana-
gers as a ‘good cop’, ‘I think this time I had a
pretty strong and clear message and one of my
managers was great and played ‘‘good cop, bad
cop’’. I was the bad cop. I gave the tough message
and set her up to be more consulting and help
people get through it’. In another example, he
had an outside physician in the audience he could
draw on as part of the discussion on healthcare
issues. William did not see such practices as
manipulative. With regard to the ‘good cop, bad
cop’ incident, ‘It is not manipulative, I see it as
my role, I cannot be the one who will sit there
and go through it (the issue) with them, she is’.
William was careful to preserve the appearance
of his own competence. Additionally, he called
upon others, such as recent converts as well as
experts, particularly in meetings, to help sell his
messages,
‘In the meeting I will call upon people that I know
have gone through some similar experience and ask
them to share their experience with the group - to
show them it is possible to do. Or I will ask the
273
opinions of some of the senior people in the room,
the finance director for instance and he just got
through a meeting with the CEO so he knows what
the financial message is.
Lastly, William was culturally adept at showing
sensitivity to others to help develop rapport by,
for example, drawing on aspects of his own
background to identify with others, such as his
knowledge of their country or language, or a
common interest in sport. He was also very aware
of the differences between the divisions, and how
to approach them differently. However, despite
the diversity, one common denominator was the
bottom-line, cost focus. William had been quick
to align his own agenda to this.
Gathering intelligence
Beth’s role provided her with much of the strate-
gic information she would need to otherwise
build through intelligence work. She had linkages
with the senior management team, extensive
involvement in the merger process and acted as
a filter for initiatives from the Corporate Centre,
‘I become the organization’s filter for anything
that is related to OD or people processes, along
with HR and Wendy. So the organization only
ever gets what we filter and allow through’.
Emma, by comparison, undertook intelligence
work to identify people’s priorities, which then
fed into aligning agendas that she could sell to
individuals based on their interests:
I was taking people out and thinking, what do you
want to get out of it? Basically, I said look, this is
what we have got, what would interest you? What
would give you a niche? So basically they knew they
could develop that. I was giving them the oppor-
tunity to take ownership of something, its yours, do
with it what you want . . .
William estimated that he spent up to half his
time gathering intelligence or else ‘crafting’ his pre-
sentations to senior management. He also sought
to identify the key players in any scenario. His
activity in this area, like Emma, then fed into his
aligning agenda and stage-management activities.
Managing up
Beth appreciated the importance of getting
support from the senior management team early
274
on. When initiating PDP, ‘The first team we
engaged were UKMT - the senior management
team, right at the very top, to show them the
presentation and ask them if they bought into it’.
However, she shared with the senior managers an
interest in consolidating the merger. This reduced
the need for her to manage up.
Emma, by comparison, used George’s position
as the senior partner in the industry group. She
also worked to maintain the support of other
partners, such as the executive coaching partner,
through communication. Over time he was
delegating more things to her, such as work
assignment, increasing her ability to interact with
and involve others:
Communication I find the most serious thing
because in order for [Executive Coaching Partner]
to feel comfortable about some of the things I am
implementing I tell him what I am doing. . .he
knows what his managers are doing because I have
communicated it to him. So he is happy to say to
me ‘could you give this to someone to do’, whose
portfolio is it going to fit into . . . So whereas
previously managers went and said they wanted to
do this, he knows that I now have a picture of what
each person’s workload looks like.
Similarly, Emma first obtained partner agree-
ment to the overall business scorecard before she
tried to get others involved, ‘By this stage I had
spoken to the other partners, and checked if they
were happy for their people to be involved in the
process . . . and so the managers knew that the
partners knew what they were doing. So people
then took ownership of a process’.
William’s use of managing up is clear in the
description of how he worked on his change
context by getting board support for the revised
managerial incentive programme. William also
used his understanding of the board as ‘money
men,’ to identify what aspects of his remit were of
particular interest to the Board, and worked
through his immediate manager to spread con-
sistent messages to the different stakeholder
groups.
Discussion
Descriptions of the activities of the boundary-
shakers reveal two things. First, the descriptions
show how the boundary-shakers engage in a wide
Balogun et al.
range of practices to create new networks
supportive of, and acting on behalf of, their
change initiatives, and that their participation in
a wider set of social relations enables or disables
them in achieving this. Individuals do not
operate within a social vacuum (Pettigrew, 1975),
and one of the important contributions of actor
network theory has been to locate action within
networks, to show how actors are network-
depended for their sense of identity and purpose
as well as for accomplishing the objectives that
are derived from their participation in networks.
So to ‘enrol’ a network of actors, an individual
needs to act to make the different meanings
mutually compatible (Denis, Langley and Rou-
leau, 2003). We have focused upon the efforts of
boundary-shakers to make a difference, but we
have also sought to show how their efforts are
forged and harnessed within networks that give
them meaning and direction. At Consult, Emma
was tasked with working to create a range of
across industry-group committees, each engaged
in work designed to facilitate the creation of a
more integrated group of people. She was also
working to pull individuals from the disparate
service lines into a network of shared purpose
around ‘trusted business advisers’ with a focus on
adding value for the client. William was working
to develop networks of individuals in the different
Engco divisions who would implement across
division pensions, benefits and healthcare pro-
grammes. Beth, by comparison, in her more
enabled context, was able to work through
existing networks.
Second, the above vignettes show how the
activities of the boundary shakers are not just
directed toward building new networks around
new interests, but also to altering the (constrain-
ing) context of action, ‘the power of the system’,
by changing the ‘meanings’ of existing networks.
At Engco the existing silos resisted central
mandates and attempts at standardization from
the centre. Against this, the rise in cost con-
sciousness was an opposing force. William
harnessed the rise in cost consciousness to his
cross-divisional programmes by linking these
programmes into the businesses’ cost priorities.
Once he had persuaded the board to place higher
priority on his initiatives, and include personal
objectives in performance related pay and assess-
ment, he had a lever he could use against the silo
mentality. Emma at Consult worked with part-
Managing Change Across Boundaries
ners other than her sponsoring partner to
convince them of the merits of doing things on
an industry group, as opposed to a service line,
basis. However, this still leaves open the issue of
what practices the boundary-shakers were enga-
ging in to create new networks and alter the
meanings to which old networks were attached.
Boundary-shaking practices
The (bottom-up) data analysis suggests that
micro-political perspectives, such as the manage-
ment of meaning (Hardy, 1994 & 1996, Lukes,
1974; Pettigrew, 1985; Pfeffer, 1981) and the
dramaturgical metaphor (Clarke, 1995; Mang-
ham, 1978, 1986) are relevant for making sense of
the patterns we find in terms of the practices the
boundary-shakers engage in when trying to enrol
others to their networks and work against the
constraints imposed by the power of the system,
since most of their activity is to do with symbolic
power. Mangham (1978, 1986) argues that
managers improvise their performance through
three types of scripts – situational, personal and
strategic. Strategic scripts, in particular, are
designed to bring about certain other pieces of
behaviour on the part of others. Here the actor is
conscious of what (s)he is doing and what (s)he is
trying to achieve through his/her actions. There is
an element of planning and manipulation not
found in the other scripts. Improvisation is about
bringing scripts to life; about using personal and
strategic scripts within the context of a situa-
tional script (Clark, 1995). Therefore perfor-
mances consist of both a front-stage and a
back-stage (Buchanan and Boddy, 1992), where
back-stage is about the pre-planning on demea-
nour, language, dress and so on (Mangham,
1978, 1986).
We can see many examples of such improvisa-
tion in our boundary shakers’ practices through
their use of strategic scripts to engage others and
gain support for their change initiatives. One of
our boundary-shaker practice categories is called
‘stage management’, and William in particular, at
Engco, provides us with many examples of such
behaviour, both in terms of the ‘front stage’
execution and the ‘back stage’ planning, with the
‘good cop bad cop’ routine, the use of expert testi-
mony at meetings, and so on. Aligning agendas
and managing up involve explicit attempts to
engage (manipulate) others into seeing the
275
agenda of the boundary-shakers as furthering
their own interests – and involve explicit front-
stage and back-stage activity with pre-planning
of the events, meetings and language. Beth linked
her initiatives at Pharma into the issues managers
were having to deal with; and Emma was
constantly working with individuals to find ways
of furthering personal interests (which may not
be furthered through continued loyalty to the old
service line structure) through the integration
initiative. Intelligence gathering on the agendas
and interests of others, and, as for William, the
identification of power players and how to craft
presentations, is an important back-stage activity
feeding into stage management, aligning agendas
and managing up. Adjusting measurement sys-
tems, or getting someone else to, are also a form
of back-stage activity, since these systems pro-
mote individuals to engage in the change
initiatives for altruistic reasons. Consistent with
the notion of the power of meaning, these
activities were largely aimed at inhibiting opposi-
tion and gaining cooperation, rather than defeat-
ing others. The boundary-shakers were engaged
in efforts to shape the meanings others attached
to their change initiatives, and thus relied on a
variety of (symbolic) means to affect perceptions.
Change agency and power
Our analysis supports Hardy’s (1994, 1996)
argument that change agents address and engage
the ‘power of the system’. They mobilize the
existing power of the system as they skilfully
negotiate power interdependencies to enrol staff
to their cause. Our boundary-shakers are like
spiders spinning a web, winning the support of
senior people, and then using this support to
enable them to draw their peers and more junior
people into the web. By such means they
simultaneously work within the constraints of,
yet change, the existing power of the system. The
boundary-shakers created the impression of
usefulness, and convinced their seniors of their
‘value and quality’ (Clark, 1995). Like internal
consultants (Pettigrew, 1975), their ability to
enrol their seniors depends partly on their
reputation, and the impression they create of
being able to offer a service to these senior
managers. They engaged in extensive back-stage
and front-stage activity, with the back-stage as
preparation for front-stage activity at the events –
276
whether one-to-one or group meetings – where
they enlist the cooperation of their colleagues.
Hardy (1994, 1996) highlights the deployment
of the power of resources, decision-making and
meaning to change the power of the system. For
boundary-shakers constrained by the existing
power of the system, however, this is less feasible.
When existing taken-for-granted and embedded
patterns of power do not support their initiatives,
boundary-shakers use the management of mean-
ing to build support networks upwards, as well as
laterally and downwards, with those individuals
who do have this (reified) power, and through
these means persuade those individuals to
exercise this power in support of the boundary-
shaking projects. In the more constrained
contexts of Engco and Consult, the boundary-
shakers were not implementing initiatives started
without the sanction of their senior managers,
yet the senior managers still had to be persuaded
to take action to support these initiatives. The
shifting political agendas in organizations are
often seen as a hazard for change agents
(Buchanan, 1991; Hartley, Bennington and
Binns, 1997). Our findings suggest that change
agents address this hazard by working with these
agendas by positioning their practices in relation
to the existing networks of interests (see also
Tantoush and Clegg, 2001). However, for the
boundary-shakers such as William and Emma to
persuade others to exercise the resource and/or
process power that accrues to them through the
existing power of the system, boundary-shakers
need to manage up. Thus they need to be able to
draw on some degree of process power to have
that access.
Conclusions
In this paper we have drawn on a range of micro-
political perspectives on change to illuminate the
practices of boundary-shakers as they attempt to
enrol others in their change initiatives. Whilst we
know that change agency requires the use of front-
and back-stage activity (Buchanan and Boddy,
1992), the dramaturgical perspective suggests that
boundary-shakers, and therefore change agents
in general, act as conscious and deliberate
manipulators of their organizational contexts
and those they work with. It also highlights the
level of improvization required of change agents
Balogun et al.
in more-constrained organizational contexts. Our
analysis puts political activity centre stage in a
way that many managers (and indeed some of
our boundary-shakers) may find distasteful, and
reveals the pervasiveness of the need for such
activity. We have stressed how ‘the power of the
system’ at once constrained and enabled the
boundary shakers whose agential capacity to
make a difference did not exist independently of
the systemic context in which they worked.
Our findings also show how change agents can
be obliged to work within the existing system of
power relations to persuade others to make it
possible for them to achieve their change object-
ives. Boundary-shakers therefore become reliant
upon others, and their skill at enrolling their
support, as a mechanism for building and main-
taining the networks upon which they depend.
Their effectiveness lies in their knowledge of
others and the organization. Boundary-shakers,
and therefore change agents in general, are more
reliant on ‘back-stage’ activity and symbolic
forms of power in preparation for their front-
stage performances than is typically portrayed.
At one level, our approach to studying
boundary-shakers has involved a novel departure
from mainstream change agency research. Our
focus has been on the practices of a sub-set of
change agents, namely boundary-shakers, across
contexts of action to illustrate the infusion of
context into practice. The innovative nature of
our research methodology resides in its close
attention to the work of change agents/bound-
ary-shakers based upon their accounts of their
practices generated through focus groups as well
as more-conventional interviews. However, the
distinctive strength of our approach is also a
limitation, as we did not interview those with
whom the change agents interacted. In addition,
the specialized nature of the work of these
boundary-shakers means that we can only gen-
eralize our findings to change agents as a broader
group with caution. It is possible, for example,
that their operating across organizational bound-
aries increases dependency on the management of
meaning. In line with Lincoln and Guba (1985),
therefore, we sought to provide some level of
thick description of the setting so that readers can
better assess how well our findings may fit other
settings.
It is also quite possible that, despite our effort
to engender open discussion and self-reflection,
Managing Change Across Boundaries
the accounts given were themselves ‘dramaturgi-
cal’ and self-serving. Such concerns might be
addressed by undertaking participatory action
research in which there is much greater two-way
communication, allowing ‘research subjects’ to
respond to, and reflect upon, researchers’ (own
self-serving?) accounts of their ‘subjects’ prac-
tices, thereby enabling an enhanced awareness of
the politics of research in addition to advancing
research into organizational politics.
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Julia Balogun is a Professor of Strategic Management at Cass Business School, City University. Her
current research interests include processes of strategy development and strategic change, with a
focus on the managerial practice of strategy and managerial sensemaking. She has also published in
Academy of Management Journal, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies and Long
Range Planning.
Pauline Gleadle is a Lecturer in Management at the Open University Business School. Her primary
research areas include individual and personal identity, particularly of so-called knowledge workers.
As she is a Chartered Accountant, her day job involves teaching management accounting and
control, including from a strategic management perspective.

Veronica Hope-Hailey is Professor of Strategy at the University of Bath School of Management and
Director of the Change Management Research Consortium, a multi-sector group of organizations
researching a range of themes including managing across boundaries and the impact of continuous
change on organizations and their staff. Veronica teaches across the broad spectrum of strategy,
change, HRM and people management.

Hugh Willmott is Diageo Professor of Management Studies and Director of the PhD Programme at
the Judge Institute of Management at the University of Cambridge. His books include Making
Quality Critical, The Re-engineering Revolution, Managing Knowledge, Management Lives, Studying
Management Critically and Fragmenting Work. He has published widely in social science and
management journals and currently is a member of the editorial boards of the Academy of
Management Review, Organization Studies and Journal of Management Studies. Further details can
be found on his homepage: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/hcwhome
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