Visualising Strategic Change:: The Role and Impact of Process Maps as Boundary Objects in Reorganisation

Based on an in-depth case study of an organizational change programme within a major UK bank, this paper explores how managers use process maps to facilitate the diffusion of strategy ideas. Process maps legitimise and diffuse strategic change, they are flexible, being able to evolve and incorporate other tools and have the potential to metamorphose into repositories of knowledge, thereby signalling the permanence of the change programme. However, while process maps might be seen as powerful devices, they are also subject to the capabilities of those who use them and contingencies such as the requirement for interim success stories and broader factors of organisational timing, technology and culture.