Making sense of organizational change: decision-making in complex environments

Abstract

Decision makers are confronted by a range of emotions, ambiguities and uncertainties in attempting to understand and make sense of change. This exploratory study aims to analyse strategic decision-making, focusing on the meanings attributed by managers during organizational change, in complex environments. The sensemaking literature has been applied because of its association with decision-making and in order to assess how sensemaking in decision-making could be examined. Organizational agents make sense through the mental maps, or schemata that they draw on when dealing with ambiguity. Framed within social constructivist paradigm, this research employs qualitative research design to explore the experiences of managers when making decisions. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with senior managers in two complex contexts; a university in Australia and a construction company in India. After raw data were captured, documents were analysed using categorical aggregation to establish themes or patterns. The decision makersâ responses revealed four themes that helped them to prepare the organization for potential changes. The common themes that emerged from both the cases were rational approaches to decision-making, politics and processes and organizational context. Recognizing the complexity of environments, this research suggests recommendations that may assist the change management community to improve decision making and to share traits, tools, and practices of effective change leaders.