Making sense of different responses to corporate change

Abstract

Organizations can respond to change in a number of ways such as by transforming the organization, by making symbolic changes, by customizing the change to better fit the context, or by corrupting the change and actually reinforcing status quo. In this article we compare how three business units respond to the same corporate change initiative.We traced organizational responses to change over time and found that responses to change initially varied across business units, but over time most organizational changes were customized to fit the business unit context. We argue that organizational-level responses and how these develop over time can be explained by examining individuals’ interpretative responses. Through inductive analysis we identify five interpretative responses at the individual level: convergent response, divergent response, unresolved sensemaking, creative response, and non-compliance, and show how these shape organizational-level responses.