 Sensemaking in organisations -- towards a conceptual framework for understanding strategic changeThomas Ericson Scandinavian Journal of Management, 2001, vol. 17, issue 1, 109-131 Abstract: When an organisation is facing dramatic change, shared and individual meanings are challenged and exposed to reconstruction. Thus, if we are to understand organisational change it is necessary to understand the meanings that prevail among the organisational members, as well as the processes whereby these meanings change and coincide. This paper develops a sensemaking perspective in order to generate a conceptual framework for increasing our understanding of strategic change in organisations. Four ideal types of meaning constitute the core of this framework. With the help of these ideal types, various meaning statuses that may be present within an organisation are described. In order to grasp the transformations from one ideal type of meaning to another, four processes of transformation are identified. A strategic change process in a university hospital is analysed. In this change process different ideal types of meaning are identified. A process of a transformation from one ideal type to another, driven by strong and powerful symbolic processes, is also identified. Keywords: Sensegiving; Sensemaking; Strategic; change (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:scaman:v:17:y:2001:i:1:p:109-131 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Scandinavian Journal of Management is currently edited by Janne Tienari More articles in Scandinavian Journal of Management from Elsevier |
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