Organisations continue to struggle with strategic change (Downs et al. 2006, Balogun and Hailey 2008). Interestingly, it has been shown that up to 50% of strategic decisions fail for reasons relating to their implementation rather than formulation (Hickson et al. 2003, Raes et al. 2011). In looking at strategic change from strategy-as-practice (Balogun et al. 2014) or other contemporary discourse and temporal related (Bartunek and Woodman 2015) perspectives, it has been found that the most useful skills and knowledge are those which help practitioners make sense of it (Andrews et al. 2008, Van de Ven and Sun 2011). Sensemaking, an ongoing individual and collective dialectical process underpinning critical business activities, is a critically important topic in the study of organisations (Weick et al. 2005, Maitlis and Christianson 2014). This is of particular relevance in today’s world where organisations are required to make sense of requirements on the run (Brown et al. 2016). While the individual, cognitive process of sensemaking has received significant attention to date (Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991, Weick et al. 2005), there is still much to understand about the social and interactive process of collective sensemaking. In particular, the role of the senior leadership team in recognising and enabling collective sensemaking so that its potential can be fully realised deserves exploration.
Research was undertaken among six middle manager teams in three Irish-based organisations: one indigenous and two Irish sites of multi-national corporations. Through a qualitative diary method, 36 middle managers’ experiences of ongoing strategic change events were captured over a period of twelve weeks.
Findings identify a type of collective sensemaking, referred to as shared sensemaking, which underpins the process of organisational strategy and strategic change. Shared sensemaking is a highly impactful form of sensemaking characterised by an ongoing, systematic approach to discourse between the senior leadership team and middle management. It is shown to be enabled by the organisational and senior leadership team practices of sustained alignment, planning and prioritisation of strategic change events, and the allocation of sensemaking time around these events. These practices are underpinned by three critical leadership behaviours; persevering with strategic change beyond its initiation stages, developing mutual trust and empowering middle managers.
Shared sensemaking is shown to positively influence middle manager engagement with and enactment of strategic change, sensegiving with their own teams, and to contribute to positive perceptions of strategic outcomes and organisational context. Findings also highlight the critical role of senior leadership team schemata of sensemaking and the middle manager ‘as sensemaker’. These prevailing schemata influence the organisational context, either enabling or disabling shared sensemaking as a critical organisational capability, and subsequently the middle manager role in the formulation and implementation of organisational strategy and strategic change.
This study evolves our existing knowledge of sensemaking theory through the development of a conceptual model of shared sensemaking in organisations. This model also has a strong practical application for organisations who wish to better understand and improve their middle manager contributions to organisational strategy, strategic change, innovation and learning.
