Change, talk and sensemaking

TLDR

The analysis deconstructs language to reveal how power sites influence sensemaking among organizational members. The paper investigates how a regional health centre’s merger experience demonstrates that organizational talk becomes privileged and meaningful in constituting identity during change. Using a post‑structuralist approach, the authors apply critical sensemaking and critical discourse analysis to examine how certain talk is privileged in the change process. The study finds that privileged organizational talk enacts sensemaking, shaping identity maintenance, alteration, or constraint during change, and illustrates the discursive effects of change language, providing practical insights for practitioners and advancing the empirical use of critical sensemaking.

Abstract

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on the change experience of a regional health centre that was merged in the late 1990s and shows how organizational talk becomes privileged in the change process, and how some talk becomes meaningful in the constitution of organizational identity. Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyzes the process through which some talk is privileged in the organizational change process. The deconstruction of language used throughout this analysis highlights the relationship between sites of power and the ability to affect sensemaking among organizational members. Using a post‐structuralist approach, the authors apply the analytic framework of critical sensemaking (CSM) and critical discourse analysis. Findings – Organizational talk is presented as the enactment of a sensemaking process and insights are offered into the process of how organizational identities are maintained, altered or constrained during change. The discursive effects of the language of change, including the belief that change is actually a discursive process about the mutual constitution of language and identity in a process of making sense of the discourse of change, are discussed. Research limitations/implications – The merging of critical discourse analysis with CSM provides an alternative means of understanding organizational change, including the socio‐psychological processes that occur within the privileging of the language of change. Practical implications – For organizational change practitioners, the paper provides insights into the importance of how organizational members make sense of the change language discourse, which can affect how they introduce future change processes. Originality/value – The paper provides a novel way of understanding the change process and furthers the empirical use of (critical) sensemaking as a method.