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Institutional Bridging A Longitudinal Study of
Change Projects in an Offshore Construction
Yard Eirik J. Irgens and Harald
Ness Nord-Trøndelag University College N- 7600
Levanger, Norway e-mail eirik.irgens_at_hint.no ha
rald.ness_at_hint.no
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AMA is a fabrication yard, located in Verdal in
the rural area of Mid-Norway. Since 1970, AMA
has served the offshore markets, mainly in the
North Sea. Key products Engineering and
building of large steel constructions (modules,
jackets), hulls, and wellhead platforms. The
company has employed up to 3000 people.
Following a downsizing in 1999, where 400
employees were laid off, AMA in 2003 employed
roughly 550 people. These products are highly
specialized, and the designs are frequently
changed during the building period. In the late
seventies / early eighties, there were about
twenty Norwegian construction yards competing
with AMA. In 2003, there were only six left, and
among the surviving yards AMA was the only yard
still building steel jackets. At the same time,
global competition, including that of the Far
East, had become even stronger.
The Company
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A Historical Study of 15 Years of Change Projects
Change, or Continuity?

• Numerous organizations kick off change projects
  in order to improve their overall performance.
  Consequently, in many organizations change
  projects follow change projects, and meetings
  between external knowledge as represented by
  management recipes and internal knowledge as
  represented by the organizations
  knowledge-in-use create dilemmas of
  conservation and innovation, continuity and
  discontinuity, exploration and exploitation.
• This is a case study of how change projects
  served as carriers and contributed to
  organizational continuity in an offshore
  construction yard. A social knowledge
  perspective is combined with organizational
  change theory to analyze the consequences of
  change agents vigorous attempts to construct
  what we have coined institutional bridges between
  change projects.
• We studied 15 years of change projects as shown
  in Table 1.

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Table 1 Main change projects in AMA 1985-2000
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15 Years of Change Projects Were Analyzed

• Documentary materials, e.g. logs, evaluation
  reports, minutes, internal quality reports and
  assessments, human resource surveys, business
  plans, diaries, memos, value and mission
  statements, management principles, newsletters,
  power point presentations, as well as interviews
  with key informants and seminars with
  participants from the company
• with a focus on how the change projects were
  interrelated, and consequently documents and
  narratives related to the legitimating and
  introduction of new change projects were
  particularly sought for.
• These documents were analyzed and discussed in
  several ways. For example the most frequently
  used terms in the change rhetoric of each change
  project were identified and counted. In this way
  it was possible to identify the most celebrated
  concepts (e.g. quality, customer, hierarchy,
  process) in the different projects, and how the
  celebration changed over time.

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Main Finding Institutional Bridging

• Change Agents Constructed Links Between the New
  and the Former Change Projects
• The creation of bridges took place when the
  change agents prepared, introduced and motivated
  employees for yet another change project.
• Change agents both tried to legitimate the new
  project, and at the same time tried to carry
  knowledge from the former project forward.
• Figure 1 is adapted from AMA change agents power
  point presentations. It illustrates how change
  agents related the new TQA-project to the former
  15-project.

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Figure 1 Constructing a bridge between the 15
in 1994 and the new TQA project (Adapted from
AMA change agents power point presentations
comments added)
Mobilization phase for the new change project
The change agents built bridges between change
projects when they prepared for, introduced and
motivated employees for yet another change
project.
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Striving To Create Continuity

• Figure 2 is adapted from AMAs internal company
  bulletin. It illustrates how change agents
  presented three sequential change projects as a
  continuity (arrows and comments are added).
• In the same bulletin, the change agents also
  explained the need to carry former knowledge and
  values forward.
• For example, they vigorously strived to carry
  forward former practices and routines that had
  been a central part of the TQM project, for
  instance ways of analyzing internal customer
  expectations, and this was done through agitation
  as well as through arranging training sessions.

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Figure 2 Constructing bridges between the 15
in 1994 , the TQA and the AMA 2000 projects
(Adapted from AMAs internal company bulletin,
arrows and comments added)
AV 2000 Concept Reengineering /BPR
Concept Total Quality
Concept None
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The Big Picture Creating continuity through
institutional bridging between change projects
Institutional bridging A way of linking the
projects together so that values, routines and
knowledge can be carried forward. In a
historical perspective, institutional bridging in
AMA created continuity.
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• A Central Question for Further Research If
  change projects by the means of institutional
  bridging may serve both as creators and as
  carriers of organizational values and knowledge,
  then change programs can play a vital role as
  construction arenas for organizational identity
  and continuity.
• Change agents then have an important, but rarely
  emphasized role as constructors of continuity and
  designers of an organizations character.
• How an organization continues, is an understudied
  phenomenon that deserves more consideration,
  according to Scott (1995).
• How can the organizational theorist help
  practitioners become more aware how they create
  these bridges, and what they carry forward and
  what they attempt to leave behind?