Change, talk and sensemaking

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to focus on the change experience of a regional health centre that was merged in the late 1990s and shows how organizational talk becomes privileged in the change process, and how some talk becomes meaningful in the constitution of organizational identity. Design/methodology/approach -The paper analyzes the process through which some talk is privileged in the organizational change process. The deconstruction of language used throughout this analysis highlights the relationship between sites of power and the ability to affect sensemaking among organizational members. Using a post-structuralist approach, the authors apply the analytic framework of critical sensemaking (CSM) and critical discourse analysis. Findings -Organizational talk is presented as the enactment of a sensemaking process and insights are offered into the process of how organizational identities are maintained, altered or constrained during change. The discursive effects of the language of change, including the belief that change is actually a discursive process about the mutual constitution of language and identity in a process of making sense of the discourse of change, are discussed.Research limitations/implications -The merging of critical discourse analysis with CSM provides an alternative means of understanding organizational change, including the socio-psychological processes that occur within the privileging of the language of change. Practical implications -For organizational change practitioners, the paper provides insights into the importance of how organizational members make sense of the change language discourse, which can affect how they introduce future change processes. Originality/value -The paper provides a novel way of understanding the change process and furthers the empirical use of (critical) sensemaking as a method.

Nurturing Cultural Change in Care for Older People: Seeing the Cherry Tree Blossom

“…Furthermore, inclusion of all stakeholders, the acknowledgement of various insights and the realisation of possibilities for collective interpretation [15] are important. The facilitation of such changes should therefore be aimed chiefly at the enhancement of conditions and possibilities that promote this, such as the development of a meaningful and valued place for all involved [10], the creation of space for multiple voices, the encouragement of interaction, and the support of the process of sense making [62,70]. This could advance reflexive processes in routine practices.…”

“…Individuals deal with such complex situations by sense making while enacting alternative behaviour or as a social and retrospective process of giving meaning to situations and experiences by verbally expressing these and sharing them with others [56,62,70]. These interactive and responsive processes of sense making contribute to the individual and collective development of identity.…”

Leading Change – Insights Into How Leaders Actually Approach the Challenge of Complexity

“…These faultlines may be activated, to the detriment of organizational effectiveness, by triggers such as differential treatment, differing values, an expectation that all members of a group will act similarly, insult, or simply being forced to interact with a different subgroup. The focus of any change initiative therefore becomes the redefinition of identity (Thurlow & Helms Mills, 2009), multiple personal identities as well as collective identities, which continue to evolve over time in a dynamic process of ongoing human interaction.…”

Corporate social responsibility: discourse, narratives and communication

“…We also identify recent studies that focus on talk in organizational change situations (Thurlow and Mills, 2009), or on narratives used when managers describe, explain, or else account for CSR-related issues (Joutsenvirta, 2009). Joutsenvirta's study shows how a linguistic perspective may reveal a sensitive understanding of how certain ways of communicating and telling stories about CSR may help or hinder efforts to comply with a more balanced relation between nature and society (Joutsenvirta, 2009).…”