Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation

Abstract

This paper reports an ethnographic study of the initiation of a strategic change effort in a large, public university. It develops a new framework for understanding the distinctive character of the beginning stages of strategic change by tracking the first year of the change through four phases (labeled as envisioning, signaling, re‐visioning, and energizing). This interpretive approach suggests that the CEO's primary role in instigating the strategic change process might best be understood in terms of the emergent concepts of ‘sensemaking’ and ‘sensegiving’. Relationships between these central concepts and other important theoretical domains are then drawn and implications for understanding strategic change initiation are discussed.

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

“…Our analysis of temporal work complements existing research on strategic sensemaking (Balogun and Johnson 2004;Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991;Gioia et al 1994;Kaplan 2008b;Maitlis and Sonenshein 2010;Rouleau 2005) by explaining how and why some strategic accounts work and some fail in practice; and, for those that do work, why some lead to status quo outcomes and others lead to change.…”

“…Yet, the literature in strategic management that has built on sensemaking has focused more on the ways in which individual sensemaking leads to shared cognitions, and in particular, how such views are "given" or justified to others (Balogun and Johnson 2004;Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991;Gioia et al 1994;Kaplan 2008b;Maitlis and Sonenshein 2010;Rouleau 2005). Less attention has been directed to the question of how interpretations of the past, present and future are constructed and linked together in more or less radical ways.…”

“…In studying strategic change, scholars have emphasized the importance of sensemaking as a collective and often conflictual interpretive process for dealing with uncertainties about the business, the market, and the environment that lead to breakdowns in understandings and require cognitive reorientations to move forward (Balogun and Johnson 2004;Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991;Gioia et al 1994;Kaplan 2008b;Maitlis and Sonenshein 2010;Rouleau 2005). These studies suggest that linking across interpretations of the past, present and future make action possible, but have left unexplained how and why some linkages work and some fail in practice, and, for those that do work, why some lead to the status quo and others produce change.…”

Forget the Past? Or History Matters? Selected Academic Perspectives on the Strategic Value of Organizational Pasts

“…46 Others demonstrated how heritage can be used to convincingly support a strategic change, or demonstrate the legitimacy of a new business direction, through the mining of an organization's past for historical antecedents that 47 By crafting authentic allusions that demonstrate that current change has plausible ties to past behaviors and actions, management can minimize the perception of the magnitude of that change and facilitate its acceptance by key constituencies. 48 Necessarily, this involves the crafting of subjective heritage stories "as influential discursive resources for crafting a meaningful account of new claims and resolving possible divergences of interpretations about core and distinctive features." 49 A number of studies showed how organizations use heritage in a structured, collective interpretation to attach meaning to events and infuse value into organizational processes and outcomes.…”

Making sense of stakeholder values emergence

“…For example use criterion '9 -Enhances teaching and learning' was uncertain for stakeholder 'h' 3 times across stages 0, 1 and 2; this stakeholder was repeatedly faced with uncertainty. This suggests that an improvement in information flow could drive better reflective decision making (Bucciarelli, 2002), sensemaking (Weick, et al 2005), sensegiving (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991) and stakeholder satisfaction (Kärnä, et al, 2013) The LEA client (stakeholder 'h') and the sustainability advisory group ('l') reported greatest levels of uncertainty. The former stated 8 times that they needed more information (across 6 criteria), while the latter was uncertain 8 times on 4 criteria.…”