Sensemaking and Sensegiving in Strategic Change Towards a change agent’s and recipients’ shared understanding

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Sensemaking and Sensegiving in Strategic Change

Towards a change agent’s and recipients’ shared understanding

Master thesis, MSc Business Administration, specialization Change Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business

24th of June, 2013

Kim Oude Vrielink Student number: 1893920 Kraneweg 75 9718 JK Groningen Tel.: +31 (0)621893399 E-mail: k.oudevrielink@gmail.com Supervisor/ university: Dr. J.F.J. Vos

Second supervisor/ university: Dr. J. Rupert

Acknowledgements:

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Sensemaking and Sensegiving in Strategic Change

Towards a change agent’s and recipients’ shared understanding

Abstract

This qualitative research aimed at the contributions of sensegiving and sensemaking to the change agent’s and recipients’ shared understanding of strategic change. In order to do so, sensegiving was approached by means of change agent behavior. For investigating those relationships, multiple case studies were conducted. In total, four agents and seven recipients participated in semi-structured interviews. Those agents and recipients originated from three distinctive cases in which strategic change was initiated. First, data analysis was performed at the level of the particular cases individually, followed by a cross-case analysis. The findings suggest that sensemaking triggers and social processes of interaction considerably influenced the creation of a shared understanding of strategic change. In addition, sensegiving seemed to affect the shared understanding of the change indirectly by affecting change recipients’ sensemaking. A main practical implication includes the awareness of the fact that a change agent is able to influence the sensemaking process of recipients in order to achieve a shared understanding of the change. Theoretically, this study increases the insights in change agent and recipient interaction from a bilateral perspective in general. Furthermore, it confirms the specific role of sensegiving and sensemaking in this interaction process.

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1. Introduction

In organizational changes, change agents, the leaders of the change, try to influence recipients, employees who have to deal with the change, in order to implement the change successfully. Although much is known about the way change agents try to influence recipients and how change recipients show resistance to their agent’s influences, the area of interaction between those actors is still indistinct. In the change management literature, many authors pay attention to the behaviors of change agents (Battilana, Gilmartin, Sengul, Pache, Alexander, 2010; Higgs & Rowland, 2011) and change recipients (Bouckenooghe, 2010; Oreg, Vakola, Armenakis, 2011) separately. A literature gap still exists in highlighting the combination of these two and the interaction that occurs when both agents and recipients come together. In practice, organizations that face organizational changes often underestimate the tendency that employees, and human beings in general, show averse behavior towards change and overvalue their current manners (Gourville, 2006).

However, according to Ford, Ford & D’Amelio (2008), change agents are portrayed as undeserving victims of the irrational and dysfunctional responses of change recipients as well as they are portrayed as people who deal with and address the objectively real resistance of change recipients. Additionally, they conclude that overcoming resistance becomes an outdated, one-sided concept that ignores the agent-recipient relationship and suppresses the potential contribution of recipients (Ford et al., 2008). Furthermore, Kotter’s (1996) well-known eight-step model for leading change starts with ‘create an urgency for change’ which is a two-sided interaction process between change agents and recipients. According to Kotter himself, this step is the one that people understand the least and have the most trouble with (Kotter, 2008). Other authors like Armenakis and Harris (2009) chose for a change recipient, employee-centric approach in contrast to many other change agent, leader-centric organizational scholars but emphasize that those two paths are not mutually exclusive and cross each other frequently. The findings from the studies aforementioned confirm the relevance of a two-sided perspective in change studies, as well as the relevance of extended research on change agent and recipient interaction.

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their own meanings that deviate from those of managers. Bartunek, Rousseau, Rudolph & DePalma (2006) confirm this by proposing that “there is no reason to assume recipients and change agents share the same understandings” (p. 183). These possible differences in meanings have consequences for the way in which employees respond to change. Therefore, ensuring a shared understanding following from interaction between change agents and recipients, or to put it differently, perceive the same (strategic) direction, may have a large impact on the chance of successful organizational changes.

In addition to the sensemaking theory from a change recipient perspective, Gioia & Chittipeddi (1991) paid attention to the sensegiving concept. They define sensegiving as supplying a workable interpretation to those who would be affected by the decision of the ‘sensegiving person’ or the process of attempting to influence the sensemaking and meaning construction of others toward a preferred redefinition of organizational reality. In this study, sensegiving represents the ability of change agents to influence change recipients’ sensemaking outcomes. Obviously, again, both the change agent and recipient play a role in sensegiving.

Following from the existing literature aforementioned, one can conclude that there is a lack of research on an explicit understanding of the interaction between change agents and change recipients. Additionally, although several researchers studied the concepts of sensegiving and sensemaking, less is known about their interconnectedness and their role in the interaction process in organizational changes. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to change agent and recipient interaction theory by clarifying those issues. Practical contributions may follow from the findings suggesting that organizations may decrease the chance of failure (or increase the chance of success) of change projects when they take into account the relationship between sensemaking and sensegiving in the interaction process during organizational changes. This study focuses on strategic change since this type of change includes the interesting characteristic regarding radical shifts in meanings, assigned to the changed organization. Since change agent and recipient interaction may have huge effects on the extent to which a shared understanding between agents and recipients exists, the context of strategic change is especially relevant.

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sensegiving is related to influencing and action while sensemaking is related to understanding and cognition. Since little research is performed on the roles of sensemaking and sensegiving in the interaction process, as well as their relation with a shared understanding of strategic change is not explored extensively, the central question of this research is formulated as follows:

How do sensemaking and sensegiving of both change recipients and agents contribute to their shared understanding of the strategic change?

A visual representation of this research question is shown in Figure 1. The reasons underlying this research question are the assumptions that it is the change agent’s responsibility to create and implement the change within an organization (Higgs & Rowland, 2011) and that the change recipient is responsible for carrying out or adapting the change (Ford et al., 2008). Therefore, both actors construct a meaning concerning what the change is about. Thus, an interaction that enables similar meanings, a shared understanding, may result in recipients that perform the change as intended by the change agent, which increases the chance of successful processes and outcomes of the strategic change. While the term interaction is hardly explained precisely in the existing literature, this research tries to develop a model in order to clarify the relevant concepts in change agent and recipient interaction, in a strategic change context.

This paper starts with an overview of relevant theories concerning strategic change, sensemaking, sensegiving, and their possible relationship with the creation of a shared understanding. Then, the research methods including the procedure of data collection and data analysis are discussed. After that, attention is paid to the within-case and cross-case results of the study, followed by a discussion of the interpretation of those results and conclusions.

Figure 1: General conceptual model

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2. Theoretical framework

This section depicts relevant literature concerning strategic change, shared understanding, sensemaking and sensegiving. First, an explanation of the core actors of interaction will be provided. Then, literature about strategic change will show why this context is especially interesting during research about change agent and recipient interaction. Third, there will be elaborated on the concept of a shared understanding. Lastly, the roles of sensemaking and sensegiving during interaction are discussed. This paper takes a bilateral perspective on agent and recipient interaction by clarifying the change agent’s sensegiving and the change recipient’s sensemaking contributions to the establishment of a shared understanding of the change.

2.1 Defining core actors of interaction

Before this paper gets deeper into theories related to interaction, its core actors will be explained. In change, interaction involves a change agent and a change recipient (Bartunek et al., 2006). Although many researchers take the definition of those actors for granted (e.g. Balogun & Johnson, 2005; Ford et al., 2008), this paper starts with definitions to ensure that one has a clear view of the underlying subject.

Lippit, Watson & Westley (1958) offered the first definition of change agents and remarked that those ‘outside’ agents helped to obtain improvements by planned change. A more generic and still relevant definition is provided by Beckhard (1969): “Change agent refers to those people, either inside or outside the organization, who are providing technical, specialist or consulting assistance in the management of change effort” (p. 101). This is the definition that is followed during this research since it still fits with the actual profile of a change leading person.

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important aspects that cause certain consequences. Therefore, change recipients are people who are expected to change to the desired new state that cause the ‘right’ consequences as formulated by the change agent. Although this definition might suggest that recipients have a passive role, one should remember the fact that change recipients react to change and interact with their change agents which may lead to unintentional consequences (Balogun & Johnson, 2005).

2.2 Strategic change

After clarifying the main actors during interaction, literature concerning the context of the study will be discussed. Rajagopalan & Spreitzer (1996) define strategic change as radical organizational change that is consciously initiated by top managers, creating a shift in key activities or structures that go beyond incremental changes to preexisting processes.

According to Gioia & Chittipeddi (1991), the expression ‘strategic change’ is a type of change that “involves an attempt to change the current modes of cognition and action to enable the organization to take advantage of important opportunities or to cope with consequential environmental threats” (p. 433). In addition, Mantere et al. (2012) discuss that the cognitive literature on strategic change highlights the layer of interpretative change in which meaning is destroyed, created and reconstructed around the change endeavor. According to them, the cognitive argument is that radical change requires a shift in the underlying cognitive template shared in the organization, its interpretive scheme.

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10 2.3 Enabling a shared understanding

After introducing theories related to the core actors and discussing the context of this study, attention will be paid to the importance of shared understanding between agents and recipients. According to MacKay and Chia (2013), “unintended outcomes and states of affairs may arise, not from sheer environmental forces but from the interaction of deliberate choices made by organizational actors” (p. 209). This statement explicitly shows why the achievement of a shared understanding of strategic change is relevant. Interaction between agents and recipients creates understandings of the change which could either be in line with each other, or contradict with each other. In case those understandings contradict, unintended outcomes may result. The other way around, a shared understanding of the change may increase the chances of successful change outcomes. With regard to this, Balogun (2006) states that a shift in the shared assumptions and beliefs about why events in an organization happen as they do and how people act in different situations should be involved to succeed organizational change. This statement already suggests the underlying reason of the desire to create a shared understanding between agents and recipients: organizational change success.

By looking at authors that tried to create a more concrete expression of change agent and recipient interaction, one could derive several fundamental explanations regarding the value of a shared understanding. Bartunek et al. (2006) found that recipients’ sensemaking and experience may not be the same as change agents envision. They give three possible reasons for this lack in shared understanding. First, a change agent’s diffusion of the vision could be not good or clear enough (Bartunek et al, 2006). Second, they acknowledge the possibility that a recipient already constructed a ‘prototype’ of the change and that this prototype does not correspond with the change implementation in practice. In that case, the recipients believe that change agents are not acting as they promised which causes inconsistency from their point of view. Ford et al. (2008) paid attention to this as well by reflecting on self-justifying explanations of events and activities. A third reason for differences in change perceptions include the likelihood that the current change may be blend together with previous change and so, recipients get confused of mixed messages of both changes at the same time (Bartunek et al., 2006).

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other way around, if recipients’ meanings and interpretations differ from those intended by the change leader, counteracting change consequences are likely to occur. Taking this into account, the interplay between the agent’s ‘sending skills’ and recipient’s process of creating interpretations in the diffusion of a change vision is crucial to ensure strategic change success. In addition to this interplay between recipients and agents and the remark made by Bartunek et al. (2006) concerning mixed messages, Sonenshein (2010) paid attention to a perspective that focuses on narratives. He argues that people use narratives in order to understand and influence change. Therefore, narratives can be seen as a tool during interaction used by both agents and recipients. These narratives are then respectively called managerial narratives and employee narratives. Sonenshein (2010) proposes a theory about “how managers interweave narratives to implement strategic change and how employees embellish these interwoven narratives to make sense of the change and to narrate their response to it” (p. 505). Thus, in terms of Sonenshein, the interplay between agents and recipients discussed earlier is reflected by narratives.

Another remark on the shared understanding between agents and recipients is made by Balogun & Johnson (2005). They recognize the significance of change recipient sensemaking with regard to the interaction process by putting forward that managers (or change agents) do need to lead change in their organizations in the role of a facilitator of the recipient sensemaking process instead of a controlling and directing role, in order to achieve an alignment of interpretation. In this case again, the importance of an alignment of interpretations or shared understanding is emphasized. A more extensive background on the sensemaking process they identified will be provided next.

To conclude this section about a shared understanding, its definition, as followed in this paper, is the degree to which agent’s and recipients’ meaning of the strategic change is similar.

2.4 Sensemaking

In the process of shifting the interpretative scheme, or shared understanding, sensegiving and sensemaking may contribute by respectively influencing interpretations and interpreting the change.

2.4.1 The origin of sensemaking

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failures, people started to recognize the importance of the human element during change. During this shift, the core concept of Weick’s paper, sensemaking, gained attention. Weick et al. (2005) define sensemaking as “the process that involves the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rationalize what people are doing” (p. 409).

Maitlis and Soneshein’s paper (2010), inspired by the central ideas of Weick’s research on sensemaking dated from 1988, concludes that sensemaking is about connecting cues and frames to create an account of what is going on. Although Weick’s original paper describes sensemaking in crisis situations, it is relevant for organizational changes as well. Ashford (1988) argues that crises and organizational changes have many similarities like ambiguous events and the possibility of triggering feelings of fear and anxiety. Maitlis and Sonenshein (2010) recognize that it is important to be aware of whose sensemaking is examined in literature. Most of the existing research focused on sensemaking of top management and middle managers (Balogun, 2006; Balogun & Johnson, 2005) but as Maitlis & Sonenshein (2010) emphasize, “a focus on managers is important but in most change efforts, frontline employees are often responsible for implementing the bulk of change efforts” (p. 559). Following from this may be derived when the bulk of change efforts are implemented successfully, the overall organizational change will be more successful as well. Therefore, employees’ sensemaking is extremely relevant in order to achieve strategic change success. Hence, this paper focuses on sensemaking on the level of the frontline employees.

In addition to this underlying reason for paying attention to employees’ sensemaking, there is a possibility that employees enact the change differently than their managers do (Bartunek et al., 2006). This may result in different sets of shared meanings and following from that, different actions among these different groups. Therefore, taking employees’ sensemaking as a starting point for this study may increase the overall practical contributions towards a greater chance of change success.

2.4.2 Sensemaking as a subjective process

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initiative’s espoused mission. Greater participation was positively related to experiencing gains as it was intended with the intervention (Bartunek et al., 2006).

Furthermore, Balogun & Johnson (2005) discussed the impact of change recipient sensemaking to explain intended and unintended change outcomes. They recognize a subjective aspect of sensemaking by proposing that sensemaking triggers and old schemata lead to social processes of interaction. Then, these social processes of interaction, both vertically and laterally, result in developing schemata followed by the change outcomes: intended and unintended outcomes as seen from a change agent’s perspective. Old schemata are represented by the existing ways of thinking before a change is initiated. Sensemaking triggers can be formulated as events and happenings that cause sensemaking during change. These triggers include for instance the designed change goals like new working practices, designed change interventions (e.g. launch communications) and design flaws (e.g. irritation) concerning the fit of business as usual. Social processes of interaction include interaction between change agent and recipients or interaction between recipients amongst each other in which thoughts and experiences are shared and discussed. These social processes lead to the developing schemata which can be described as the interpretations constructed by recipients concerning of what the change is about. Lastly, the emergent change outcomes in the sense of congruent or counteracting change consequences follow. These outcomes are the visible results by means of behaviors and actions ,of the sensemaking process. Due to the fact that this framework comprises the different elements of sensemaking, it seems valuable for studying sensemaking of recipients in this study.

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14 2.5 Sensegiving

After discussing sensemaking from a recipient’s point of view, sensegiving from the change agent’s angle is relevant for understanding the creation of a shared understanding in the interaction between change agents and recipients. Sensegiving was originally emphasized by Gioia & Chittipeddi (1991). They define sensegiving as supplying a workable interpretation to those who would be affected by the decision of the ‘sensegiving person’ or the process of attempting to influence the sensemaking and meaning construction of others toward a preferred redefinition of organizational reality.

2.5.1 Concept of framing

Fiss & Zajac (2006) agree with Gioia & Chittipeddi that sensemaking in strategic change needs to be complemented with sensegiving. They define sensegiving as the process by which strategic change is framed and disseminated to an organization’s constituents. Futhermore, they researched strategic change regarding to the concept of framing as it is used in the literature of social movements. According to Fiss & Zajac (2006), “the concept of framing could provide an attractive approach for understanding the process of sensegiving, particularly when such change may be highly controversial” (p. 1174). In this sense, frames can be conceived as schemata of interpretation that actors use to affect the interpretation of events among different audiences (Snow et al., 1986). Theories about framing are very communication-based and although many studies have shown that communication plays an important role in the production of change (Ford & Ford, 1995), Ford and Ford suggest that change is a phenomenon that occurs within communication and that the production of intentional change should start with the recognition of ‘performative speeches’. This includes the believe that conversation produces change. Their statement is quite clear: “Talk is not cheap: What is said matters, and rigor and consciousness in the communication of change are what differentiates a successful change from one that is derailed by resistance and uncertainty” (p.560). Thus, being aware of the messages that are send out to change recipients may be crucial in achieving the intended change actions.

2.5.2 Linking sensegiving and change agents’ behavior

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behavior that includes the development of a vision of the future, strategies to bring the vision into reality, dealing with crises perceived on the way and mobilize everybody in the organization to work towards the same goals and objectives. Comparing these definitions, their similarities are obvious and therefore, sensegiving will be studied by means of change agent behavior.

Rouleau (2005) emphasizes, in correspondence with Gioia and Chittipeddi (1991), that sensemaking and sensegiving are interrelated concepts which could be seen as two sides of the same coin. As in many literature, a lot of attention is paid to the way in which managers and change leaders make sense of organizational change. However, there is still a lack of research on sensegiving and how it actually works as counterpart of sensemaking. Balogun & Johnson (2005) conclude their research by mentioning that managing change is less about directing and controlling and more about facilitating recipient sensemaking processes in order to achieve alignment of interpretation. This confirms the relevancy of making the connection between sensegiving and change agent behavior and suggests that certain ways of sensegiving lead to a greater chance of alignment of interpretation, or a shared understanding of the change. Hence, this study attempts to investigate how sensegiving, in the sense of leadership or change agent behavior, and sensemaking influence the process of establishing a shared understanding.

A theory that focused on change agent behaviors is the theory originating from Higgs and Rowland (2005). Based on their empirical study, they categorize three sets of leadership behaviors that distinguish change leaders from each other. Although many theories regarding leadership behavior exist, for instance theories that distinguish between transactional and transformational (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985) and the situational leadership theory (Hersey & Blanchard, 1977), this paper focuses on the theory of Higgs & Rowland since their sets of leadership behaviors are based on leadership competencies that are associated with the successful implementation of organizational changes while the majority of theories in this field of study are focused on leadership in general.

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3. Methods

This section of the paper describes the methods used in the study in order to collect, measure and analyze the data. Since this research had a theory developing nature, multiple cases have been adopted in this study. The proceedings of selecting those cases are therefore discussed first. Then, descriptions with regard to the participating organizations and their change stories are provided. Furthermore, the process of data collection is described in which attention is paid to, for instance, the development of the interview protocols. This section will end with a discussion of the data analysis process, in which the coding scheme is clarified.

3.1 Case selection

Since this research has a qualitative, theory building character, the needed data is collected by studying several cases in organizations that initiated strategic change. According to Eisenhardt (1991), an advantage of a research design that uses multiple cases includes the ability to enable comparisons that clarify why a finding is idiosyncratic to a single case or whether the finding may be structural for other cases as well. The interviews took place with agents and recipients from diverse organizations, in the sense that they dealt with different organizational changes. This diversity made the overall results more general and comparable since the results are based on multiple cases instead of a single one, which contributes to the reliability of this study.

An important issue on case selection is the question of some critics concerning the generalization of theory from cases that are not representative for a certain population. Eisenhardt (1991) paid attention to this question and emphasized that the purpose of theory building studies is not to test theory but, as the name already suggests, to develop theory. From this perspective, theoretical sampling is an appropriate sampling method in order to extend the logic among constructs. Thus, the degree in which this study’s cases were representative is not relevant. In fact, Yin (1994) argued that extreme cases provide even a stronger base for theory building.

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recipient was consulted since this recipient was the single person in the company who dealt directly with the involved change agent. Another requirement to make research possible included the situation that a change recipient and agent still needed to be working at the organization and those actors should have kept the change process fresh in mind. This last remark is important to guarantee that people’s bias to be lenient in their judgments is diminished as much as possible.

Work-related connections and relatives were asked to consult their acquaintances in order to get access to organizations with valuable changes for this study. These requests led to several interesting organizations that faced strategic changes. Before an organization’s participation in the research was arranged, some introductory conversations took place. These introductory conversations were organized in order to clarify the intentions and contributions of this study. Furthermore, they provided background information concerning the cases. Based on these conversations, the decision regarding participation in the study was made. Due to the fact that the connection with some organizations was established by relations who were not aware of the content of this research, some preliminary meetings were also the last meetings since the cases did not fit the research well enough. Thus, to come back to the importance of a shared understanding: even in this situation the significance of enabling a shared understanding appeared. Nevertheless, information of three cases deriving from four organizations has been collected for this research.

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19 3.2 Case descriptions

The data is collected from four organizations that included eight different change stories and 11 qualitative interviews. In this case, the interaction during organizational change between one agent and one recipient is seen as a change story. The four organizations that were involved in this research were part of three different changes since two organizations participated in the same change: they merged. Next, de three cases will be described. Due to confidentiality issues, the descriptions are covered to ensure that the organizations will not be recognized.

3.2.1 The case of a merger between sports organizations

The organizational change in this case concerned a merger between two organizations in a sports industry: one was originally located in the east of The Netherlands while the other was situated in the north. Both organizations engaged in similar business activities before the merger took place. Now they merged and became one organization with about 70 employees that puts the strengths of both organizations together by using each other’s resources. Relevant actors in this case are the members of the organization’s management and the remaining personnel whereof some are more involved in the total activities of the organization than others. For the interviews, a mix of those recipients is consulted to increase the representativeness of the participants in the interaction with their change agents.

As a consequence of the merger, the activities that were already performed by both organizations individually, are yet combined which leads to scale advantages and opportunities for the internal business as well as their offers to the external environment. These business activities include the exploitation of sport accommodations, the provision of sport training and the organization of tournaments for both national and international sportsmen. Since the company is grown towards a size twice as big as the former distinct organizations were, the strategic position with respect to competitors is changed.

3.2.2 The case of a directors change in healthcare consultancy

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noticeable in the internal processes and organizational culture. Since the change aimed to bring the organization back on top of their branch, the type of change could be indicated as strategic. Interviews were conducted with consultants (i.e. employees) and the new leader of the organization.

3.2.3 The case of a new strategic direction for a footwear producer

In the third case of this study, a footwear producing organization in The Netherlands changed their business strategy towards an outside-in approach. The organization has two locations, the business located in The Netherlands, the one that is focused on in this research, has about 90 employees in total and includes both office and factory workers. The company is relatively flat structured, with the management team on top, some division leaders and remaining employees. Due to the changing economic times and consequently, changing markets, the new CEO wanted to respond to these changes by designing a new strategic vision which is done together with other members of the management team. In this new vision, the focus is changed towards external wishes and selling prices instead of internal production and cost prices. These changes required another approach and cooperation from and between the several departments. In this case, he interviews were conducted with the CFO and a financial manager.

3.3 Data collection

Once the cases were promised, interviews with change recipients end their change agent(s) were conducted. The interviews were set up semi-structured since this type of interview made it possible to gather rich information from the participants. An overview of the distribution of the interviewees among the cases is presented in Table 1. The number of participants are split in two for the case concerning the merger of sports organizations, this reflects the participants originating from the two former separate organizations, before the merger took place. Table 2 summarizes the participants’ demographic backgrounds.

Table 1: Distribution of participants among the cases

1. Merger of sports organizations

2. Directors change healthcare consultancy

3. New strategic direction footwear producer

Recipient 2 2 2 1

Agent 1 1 1 1

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Table 2: Demographics of participants concerning the case of a merger between sports organizations

Case 1 A1 A2 R1 R2 R3 R4 Age 53 54 46 21 60 32 Gender M M M M M M Years of work experience in current function 20 27 10 1 13 4 Years of work experience in organization 20 27 10 1 5 7 Level of education University of Science University of Prof. Education University of Prof. Education Vocational Education Vocational Education University of Prof. Education

Table 3: Demographics of participants concerning the case of a directors change in healthcare consultancy

Case 2 Agent 3 Recipient 5 Recipient 6

Age 61 35 34

Gender M M F

Years of work experience in current function

30 4 8

Years of work experience in organization

30 4 7

Level of education University of Science University of Science University of Science

Table 4: Demographics of participants concerning the case of a new strategic direction for a footwear producer

Case 3 Agent 4 Recipient 7

Age 45 43

Gender M M

Years of work experience in current function

13 4

Years of work experience in organization

5 4

Level of education University of Professional Education University of Professional Education

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understanding of the situation. This protocol is adjusted and complemented to be able to measure the specific concepts of this study; the effect of sensemaking and sensegiving on the shared understanding of strategic change.

The interview questions concerning sensegiving and sensemaking are based on the definitions of both concepts. By looking at important aspects of both concepts, questions were set up in order to collect data that represents sensemaking and sensegiving. A concrete example of the development of questions for sensegiving includes the sensegiving aspect ‘influencing the sensemaking process of recipient’, which led to questions like: ‘To what extent did you try to adjust your change approach to a certain recipient?’ or ‘How did you influence a recipient’s attitude towards the change?’. Other questions with regard to sensegiving were related to leadership behavior in general as well as specific questions about communication style and an agent’s attitude towards change. The underlying reason for asking both generic and specific questions includes the possibility to gather sufficient inductive information while particular information is collected as well to ensure that the interviews contributed to the predefined constructs of this study.

Furthermore, as emphasized in the theory section of this paper, a sensemaking process starts with old schemata and triggers that activate people to interact in social processes. These social processes lead to developing schemata and following from that, change consequences appear (Balogun & Johnson, 2005). By taking this into account, the interview protocol included questions like ‘To what extent are your thoughts and feelings towards the change changed during the process?’, which made people think about differences in their attitudes towards the change and its underlying reasons. By means of probing questions, information about social processes, developing schemata and final outcomes came to light.

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This study looked at measuring shared understanding from two fundamental perspectives. First, the participants are directly asked a question about their believes concerning a shared understanding, for instance: ‘To what extent do you understand the change vision of your change agent?’ This way, participants formulated change issues that are understood in their opinion and issues from which the participants know they do not understand. So, they are aware of the things they understand and do not understand in relation to the change. However, the most obvious way of measuring the shared understanding derived from observations and comparisons of an agent’s view of the change with a recipient’s one. As a result, one could check whether the understanding of an agent corresponds with a recipient’s understanding and the other way around.

Thus, based on existing literature (e.g. Bartunek et al., 2006; Higgs & Rowland, 2011; Balogun & Johnson, 2005) and aspects of the relevant constructs, interview protocols for agents and recipients were developed (shown in appendix I and II). These preset questions were used as a guideline during the interviews. In addition, probing questions were very important, especially in order to understand the underlying reasoning of the answers that were given.

3.4 Data analysis

After the collection of the qualitative data, coding all the interviews was the next step. It should be mentioned that analysis of the data took place on case level. Since the case concerning the merger of sports organizations originally included two organizations, this case is, besided the overall analysis on case level, also analyzed on the organizational level. As the research model of this study is very abstract and a more concrete model needed to be developed, the data analysis process had some characteristics of grounded theory. According to Hennik, Hutter and Bailey (2010), grounded theory cannot be perceived as a theory itself. Instead it is ‘a process for developing empirical theory from qualitative research that consists of a set of tasks and underlying principles’ (p. 208). Hennik et al. recognize the influence of those underlying principles on the analysis of qualitative data. One of those principles acknowledge that verbatim transcripts enable a researcher to comprehend the participants’ views in their own words and so, conclusions following from the interpretations of their meanings are well established from the collected data.

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and sensemaking was studied prior to the data collection, the developed codes were not all purely based on the initial data. These so called deductive codes were developed by studying the relevant literature and the interview protocols that are based on these theories. With an idea about possible deductive codes, the interview transcripts were checked again, followed by the confirmation of some of these preconceived codes. A concrete example of a deductive code is ‘shaping behavior’ which is derived from Higgs and Rowland’s theory concerning leader-centric behavior (2005) of change agents. According to them, shaping behavior could for instance be represented by statements regarding an individual focus. “I’m a control freak and want everything to be organized well” is just one of these statements that indicate shaping behavior. Another type of leadership behavior emphasized by Higgs and Rowland (2005) is framing change and this behavior may be recognized through statements about designing and managing the change journey. During an interview, a change agent mentioned that he was continuously anticipating on employees’ reactions during interventions. He tried to foresee which employees probably would had difficulties with certain interventions and as a response, he first attempted to act upon those employees before he involved the remaining part of the personnel. In such a way he managed the ‘change journey’ of the organization and showed behavior corresponding with the typology framing change (Higgs & Rowland, 2011).

In addition to the deductive codes, inductive codes were developed as well. In contrast to the deductive type, the inductive codes purely derived from the original data and therefore this type of coding could be related to the aforementioned grounding theory. The inductive codes were formulated after rereading the interview transcripts several times. Typical aspects that seemed important in at least one of the cases were remarked as a code. This way, issues that are perceived as important for participants are reflected instead of relevant issues from the researcher’s perspective (Hennik et al., 2010), which is tremendously valuable for a theory developing study. An example of an inductive code is ‘level of change’, associated with the organizational level in which the change occurred. Although it was known beforehand that the cases took part in a change characterized as strategic, the organizational level that was affected by the change seemed very significant for the participants’ experiences during the process of understanding and dealing with the change. This will be discussed in the results section.

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2010). These benefits of the application of codes during qualitative data analysis are of course contributing to the overall understanding of rough data in order to enable conceptualization and theory building. Due to the dependency and cohesion between the theoretical constructs, some statements may indicate multiple codes. For example, “The only difference is the changed company name on my pay slip” is a sign of the degree of radicalness of the change but the fact that the recipient faces another name on the pay slip could serve as well as trigger of his sensemaking process. Therefore, one should keep in mind that a text fragment could be interpreted in multiple ways.

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Table 5: Coding scheme

Code name Source Definition Code category Example from agents’ data Example from recipients’ data

Shaping behavior Deductive Statements about what leaders say and do, making others accountable, thinking about change, using an individual focus.

Change agent behavior “I think that I’m a control freak, sometimes a bit too much I think.”

“You’re in charge and you (i.e. change agent) decide the strategic direction of this company.”

Framing change Deductive Statements about establishing starting points for change, designing and managing the change journey, communicating guiding principles.

Change agent behavior “Intelligibility, so intelligible with regard to future directions.”

“I’m not a technical manager but a manager that tries, together with the people, to make it happen.”

“There are more group meetings in order to present the future directions and the current state of the organization.”

Creating capacity Deductive Statements about creating individual and organizational capabilities, communicating and creating connections.

Change agent behavior “Together we try to make clear what the themes are to set forward.”

“Helping, coaching leadership.”

“Within a little group, we shared some things then.”

“We’re going to sit in the middle of nowhere and think about it.”

Mixed messages Deductive Statements about conflicting and confusing messages regarding the change.

Shared understanding “If one person doesn’t let things go while the other doesn’t take action, nothing changes.”

“One person says that he needs to work fulltime while someone else says, that should not be done, he needs to work here as well.” Received feedback

on understanding

Deductive Statements about the way and degree in which understanding of the change is checked.

Shared understanding “I did tried, especially for the ones that work here for a longer period of time, to explain why it is important and that it isn’t just about providing training.”

“Everyone was asked to make plans for the next year in which the new vision should be supported, some kind of check whether it’s understood or not.”

Organization wide effects

Deductive Statements about how the change affected the overall organization.

Change consequences “We grew a lot which provides many new opportunities, especially with regard to the changing market.”

“Due to the cooperation, overhead costs can be shared.”

“I think that when you grow, it’s easier to realize certain things. For example coaching that can be done together.”

Effects on worker Deductive Statements about how the change affected an individual worker.

Change consequences “Yes, for me there has changed a lot in the sense that I have contact with X a few times per day, that is very different compared with the situation before.”

“For me personally, things are not changed.”

Perceived radicalness of the change

Deductive Statements about the degree in which the change affected the organization and workers

Type of change “I don’t think that things are changed that

much for our personnel.” “The only difference is the changed company name on my pay slip.” Level of change Inductive Statements about the organizational level

that is affected by the change

Type of change “Especially on the higher level, in the field of new projects, accounting, we can do more things together and save costs.”

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Table 5: Coding scheme (continued)

Code name Source Definition Code category Example from agents’ data Example from recipients’ data

Time pressure Inductive Statements about issues that indicate situations of time pressure and crisis management.

Type of change “Some things were so well developed and elaborated but we haven’t gotten it around… On a certain moment, we decided to first get things on track to make sure that the merger could go on.”

“And suddenly it became such a chaos and everything had to turn completely different.”

Participation in the change process

Deductive Statements about the way in which organizational members participated in the change process.

Type of change “I didn’t involve the trainers in this.” “It was not the case that I had a certain role in the decision making or that my opinion was the decisive factor in starting or stopping the change.”

Emotional reactions Deductive Statements about feelings towards the change.

Attitude towards change “When I called them, they reacted very down

to earth.” “Of course it’s nice to work for a bigger organization, I like that.” “It lies near my heart.”

Changed feelings and thoughts about change

Deductive Statements about changes in the attitude to the change during the change process.

Attitude towards change “In the beginning it was a ‘crisis change’ and they were fine with the things I did without an argumentation but at a certain moment they asked why I did it that way.”

“I take a more positive perspective towards the direction where the organization is developing in.”

Sensemaking triggers Deductive Statements about designed change goals, designed change interventions and design flaws.

Sensemaking “Now, they all have the same suit with the same company name. They will meet each other at tournaments and think ‘hey, you are wearing the same suit?!’”

“Factually, I have a new boss.” “This CEO goes round the table with customers more often…”

Old schemata Deductive Statements about ways of thinking before the change was initiated.

Sensemaking “They were too much just housekeepers instead of entrepreneurs.”

“Until recently, we were characterized as an innovative company but if you look at how innovative we actually were…”

Social processes Deductive Statements about sharing of

interpretations/experiences, rumors and gossip.

Sensemaking “We didn’t have had a meeting with everyone but I did verbally explain some things in two places.”

“We talked a lot about it, especially informal.”

Developing schemata Deductive Statements about interpretations about what change is about.

Sensemaking “We need to see and tackle opportunities.” “Within the walls of this organization we’re more externally focused.”

Complexity of business environment

Inductive Statements about complex issues in the internal and external business environment that makes it more difficult to change.

Organizational context “I think that there are few people within our organization who have an overview of everything that happens, I think that there are just 2 or 3”.

“It’s also difficult since it’s a very complex organization with many different focus areas.”

Degree of unity Inductive Statements about the degree to which organizational members feel unified in the organization.

Organizational context “It needs to be more a group spirit, that should

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4. Results

In this section the results from the data analysis are presented. First, attention is paid to the results within the distinct cases. To show the overlap or difference in the agent and recipient perspectives, the results originating from agents are separated from the recipients’ results. After explaining the results with regard to a case, a summary of the findings is given in the form of a table which shows an overview of statements corresponding with the coding categories. Since these coding categories cover the main theoretical concepts of this study, the results presented here will serve as a basis for the discussion that will follow later on this paper. In order to link the results to a conceptual model, first, additional elements like the type of change and organizational context are discussed. Then, the results with regard to the main concepts (i.e. sensemaking, sensegiving and a shared understanding) are presented. Furthermore, this section will end with a cross-case perspective; an indication of similarities and differences between the three cases.

4.1 The case of a merger between sports organizations

In this case concerning the merger of two sports organizations, the results are split in two parts since this case encompasses two change agents who have their own manner of sensegiving and therefore, they may act differently in the interaction process with recipients. In Table 6 and 7, the results concerning the relevant coding categories are shown. Since the change agents are part of the same management team, some issues like the change consequences, the type of change and organizational context (i.e. additional elements) are similar and therefore, these issues will not be treated separately. However, due to the fact that the agents are two different personalities with their own way of sensegiving, issues concerning change agent behavior, attitude towards change, sensemaking and shared understanding will be discussed for each particular agent and related recipients.

4.1.1 Additional elements

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following statements, origination from respectively an agent and a recipient, emphasize this: “I don’t think that things are changed that much for our personnel” and “for me personally, things are not changed”. One of the agents distinguished two types of trainers and the differences they perceive: “When I look at trainers with ambition, I think that they understand that a bigger company provides more opportunities, they understand it very well. The ones who provide their trainings without further ambitions would not care if we merge with an organization in any other city”. Additionally, the change agents mentioned that there has changed a lot for them: “Yes, for me there has changed a lot in the fact that I have contact with X a few times per day, that is very different compared with the situation before”. Hence, although the total organization has changed, the merger affected particularly the management of the organization.

Following from this, one could derive with regard to the type of change, that the perceived radicalness depends on the level in which the recipients are situated. As mentioned before, the management did face a lot of changes but for most of the employees that provide the trainings, the merger did not bring along remarkable changes besides “the changed company name on my pay slip” and “the new suit and shoes from which everyone thinks they’re amazing”. Additionally, the change could be characterized as a change on the management level. As an agent formulated: “Especially on the higher level, in the field of new projects, accounting, we can do more things together and save costs”. With regard to the degree in which employees participated in the decisions, the other agent is clear: “Then we said to one another: there are so many advantages, we need to do this”. The decision to merge is thus made by the managers without decisional power for the other employees. All of the recipients recognized this with statements like “they are the management of both companies and at that level the decision is made, I didn’t have any influence in that”. The merger did not evoke many reactions as both agents said: “You don’t get many reactions” and if there are some, “they reacted very down to earth”.

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Before paying attention to the sensemaking and sensegiving processes during this change, the organizational context will be discussed. Both agents and recipients noticed that the organization they work for is very complex and fast changing. “You cannot plan all things beforehand… You actually need plan A to Z so you need to be very flexible” is one of these statements indicating a complex organization. Another aspect of the merged organizations include a low feeling of unity within the organization. As an agent stated: “At the moment, there is still too much a ‘we’ and ‘they’”. This feeling is also recognized by a recipient: “We

work for the same employer but it doesn’t feel like real colleagues ”. Thus, although the

original companies are merged, employees do not perceive it yet as one organization.

4.1.2 Sensegiving (1)

The following issues that will be discussed are split into two in order to present differences between the agents in this case. This first part will deal with the results of the interaction between agent 1 and the related recipients (Table 3). Regarding sensegiving in the means of change agent behavior, agent 1 describes his own behavior as controlling: “I think that I’m a control freak, sometimes a bit too much I think”. This behavior is confirmed by the recipients with a statement like “It is just decided by X. He did everything by himself”. It was also recognized that these decisions made by himself are as well one of his strengths: “He is really good in making decisions ad hoc”. The communication with regard to the merger was mostly one-sided, from agent to recipient. The recipients were informed by “a letter in which was said that it went together”. According to the predefined coding scheme, these statements indicate that agent 1 especially showed shaping behavior.

4.1.3 Sensemaking (1)

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same company name. You shall see that they will meet each other at tournaments and think ‘hey, you are wearing the same suit?!’”. Concerning the social processes of interaction, the recipients were unanimous: “We didn’t talk about that actually”. They did not discuss the merger with colleagues but with regard to the sharing of interpretations, they talked just informally with their agent about the change. Following from the social processes of interaction, developing schemata were formed. A recipient mentioned: “The structure is clear now, I know who I should address for different issues” while the other recipient acknowledged that he is still not familiar with the new roles of the management team members. Due to the social processes they know as well that nothing has changed concerning their function in the organization which resulted in a neutral attitude like “I don’t have problems with it”, and a positive attitude as an outcome: “I like it to work for a bigger organization”.

4.1.4 Shared understanding (1)

By looking at the shared understanding between the agents and recipients, direct questions about their shared understanding were asked. Agent 1 said that he tried to enable a shared understanding of the change “especially for the ones that work here for a longer period of time, to explain why it is important and that it isn’t just about providing training”. Both recipients indicate that their understanding is not consulted by the change agent in a formal way but that spoke informally about their beliefs concerning the understanding of the merger. Additionally, it could be derived from the interviews that the participants do understand each other with regard to their perceived consequences on the organizational and individual level of change.

4.1.5 Sensegiving (2)

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the end, with regard to the change, the behavior of agent 2 may be characterized as shaping since he expressed the change from his own view and holds others accountable for the delivery of their tasks.

4.1.6 Sensemaking (2)

When it comes to sensemaking, a recipient noticed “During a meeting with the staff, X proclaimed that there was a merger coming. This trigger and in the mean time a moment of social processes, did not cause a lot of discussion since “It doesn’t keep the trainers busy”. Agent 2 recognized the same as agent 1 “We have found a new sponsor of our clothing and now, everyone is wearing the same.” The fact that they wear the same clothes works as a trigger for sensemaking. Due to the fact that both recipients had more responsibilities than just providing trainings, they had more interaction with their agent and talked about the change more informally than in structured meetings. These interactions led to developing schemata which included statements like: “I’m curious about the future opportunities” and “I don’t think we will have work meetings all together”.

4.1.7 Shared understanding (2)

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Table 6: Overview results of the case of a merger between sports organizations (1)

Code category Agent 1 Recipient 1 & 2

Change consequences

“We grew a lot which provides many new opportunities, especially with regard to the changing market.”

“The financial basis is healthier and the risks are more spread.” “I don’t think that things are changed that much for our personnel.”

“Yes, for me there has changed a lot in the fact that I have contact with X a few times per day, that is very different compared with the situation before.”

“I think that when you grow, it’s easier to realize certain things. For example coaching that can be done together.”

“Due to the cooperation, overhead costs can be shared.” “For me personally, things are not changed.”

“We can still do things in our own way and I think X has no problem with that.”

Type of change “Especially on the higher level, in the field of new projects, accounting, there we can do more things together and save costs.”

“I didn’t involve the trainers in this.”

“Some things were so well developed and elaborated but we haven’t gotten it around… On a certain moment, we decided to first get things on track to make sure that the merger could go on.”

“The only difference is the changed company name on my pay slip.”

“And suddenly it became such a chaos and everything had to turn completely different.” “It was not the case that I had a certain role in the decision making or that my opinion was the decisive factor in starting or stopping the change.”

Attitude towards change

“When I called them, they reacted very down to earth.” “For me, it was fine, I don’t think it is a good or a bad thing actually.” “Of course it’s nice to work for a bigger organization, I like that.” Change agent

behavior

“I think that I’m a control freak, sometimes a bit too much I think.” “I want to direct. I want everything to be organized well.”

“He is the boss, the managing director, I don’t think that he thinks that he has to discuss that with us. The more people you discuss it with, the more different opinions you will get and the harder it will be.”

“There was a letter in which was said that it went together.” “He is really good in making decisions ad hoc.”

“It is just decided by X. He did everything by himself.” Sensemaking

“Now, they have all the same suit with the same company name. You shall see that they will meet each other at tournaments and think ‘hey, you are wearing the same suit?!’”

“We haven’t talked about that actually.” “We talked a lot about it, especially informal.”

“The structure is clear now, I know who I should address for different issues.” Shared

understanding

“I did try, especially for the ones that work already a longer time here, to explain why it is important and that it isn’t just about providing training.”

“I think that we do too little on that, we could be more clear in that (i.e. checking the recipient’s understanding).”

“When I look at that (i.e. new company name), that’s not communicated clearly, some people know it and some people don’t.”

Organizational context

“I think that there are few people within our organization who have an overview of everything that happens, I think that there are just 2 or 3”.

“It is very hectic and it’s changing so fast. You cannot plan all things beforehand… You actually need plan A to Z so you need to be very flexible.”

“It needs to be more a group spirit, that should change.”

Sensemaking and Sensegiving in Strategic Change Towards a change agent’s and recipients’ shared understanding

Sensemaking and Sensegiving in Strategic Change

Towards a change agent’s and recipients’ shared understanding

Sensemaking and Sensegiving in Strategic Change

Towards a change agent’s and recipients’ shared understanding

Abstract

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical framework

3. Methods

4. Results