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. Editors' introduction This illustrative paper on doing strategy in the university context combines a quite traditional top-management focus on strategizing with both innovative method and frame-breaking theorizing. Most general texts on strategy describe the top manager as the major force in the process of strategy formation. Such a narrow view, where it is taken for granted that strategies get formulated at the top, is questioned in the Strategy as Practice perspective with its focus on activities and practices of strategizing. Strategies can emerge everywhere in the organization – anyone is a potential strategist – and different groups of people may also act as collective strategists. However, the top manager is certainly still a prime candidate for being an influential strategist, because of the power and strategic responsibility that resides with him/her as well as the overview and broad perspective on strategic issues that follow with the role (Mintzberg et al. 1998).

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