Sensemaking and Performance During Change: Some Preliminary Ideas

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Sensemaking and Performance During Change
Some Preliminary Ideas

• Scott Sonenshein and Scott Baggett
• Rice University

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Research Question

• How does an employees sensemaking about change
  affect change implementation performance?

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Starting Premises

• Change creates interruptions which trigger
  sensemaking (Weick, 1995)
• Employees have discretion to construct meaning of
  same objective event differently
• Employees matter--bias in literature that
  organizational adaptation is primarily (or even)
  solely driven by top managers

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Quick Review of Sensemaking Literature

• Sensemaking research strong focus on processes
  (e.g., Weick et al., 2005), less on content
• Research on link between sensemaking and
  performance has emphasized top managers
• Thomas et al. (1993) top managers scanning and
  interpretation processes
• Theoretical models about links between cognitions
  and actions (e.g. Dutton and Jackson, 1987) with
  key focus on labeling of issues
• Threat/opportunity framing (Chattopadhyay et al,
  2001 Staw et al., 1981)
• Little research on how employees make sense of
  change (Bartunek et al., 2006)
• Any studies that link employee sensemaking to
  unit/firm performance?
• Sensemaking primarily focused on cognitions
• Not much work on emotions and sensemaking
  (Maitlis and Vogus, 2008)

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Main Contribution of Research

• Examine how employees sensemaking content
  (cognitions and emotions) influences change
  implementation performance
• As assessed by managers (subjective performance)
• As assessed by sales data (objective
  performance)

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Subjective Performance Ideal Employee
hypothesis

• During change, managers want employees to
  construct meaning of change in particular ways
  and this will impact how they assess performance.
• Greater understanding of the strategy
• Create cognitive reorientation of the firm (Gioia
  Chittipeddi, 1991)
• Transfer cognitions to employees (Lewis, L.
  Seibold, 1998)
• More positive emotions
• Happy-productive worker hypothesis (Wright
  Staw, 1999)
• Managers observe positive employees, assume
  things are going well.
• Less negative emotions
• Reduces resistance, something managers obsessed
  with (Dent Goldberg, 1999)

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Objective performanceBut do managers know
best?

• Competing Hypotheses
• Why would adopting managerial cognitions about
  the change ? higher performance?
• Provides higher-order goals, which could increase
  knowledge about how to perform task objectives
• Reduces uncertainty about change, which could
  limit distractions
• Increases task significance (bigger picture of
  how tasks improve org)
• Others?
• But cognitions about change . . .
• Focuses on general strategy less relevant to
  employees work
• Could inundate employees with useless information
  (info overload)
• Others?

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Objective performance But do managers know
best?

• Competing Hypotheses
• Why would sensemaking that contains more positive
  emotions about the change? higher performance?
• Increases motivation (George Brief, 1996) and
  persistence (Burke et al. 1993)
• Builds thought-action repertoire (Fredrickson,
  2001)
• Increases sense of efficacy (Forgas et al., 1990)
• Leads to more helpful behavior (George, 1991)
• Others?
• But positive emotions could . . .
• Reduce motivation because sends signals things
  going well (George and Zhou, 2002)
• Lead to too optimistic of an appraisal of
  situation
• Others?

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Objective performance But do managers know
best?

• Competing Hypotheses
• Why would sensemaking that contains less negative
  emotions about the change? higher performance?
• Negative emotions associated with change
  resistance
• Negative emotions could reduce commitment to
  change
• But negative emotions could. . .
• Signal that greater effort is needed (George
  Zhou, 2001)
• Reflect a more realistic appraisal of the change,
  allowing employees to adjust behaviors

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Approach

• Context Fortune 500 retailer integrating two
  divisions
• Collected sensemaking of employees implementing
  the change (n143) at 46 units implementing same
  change
• Content analysis of sensemaking
• Cognitive sensemaking meaning constructions of
  what employees know about the core strategy of
  the change
• Emotional sensemaking meaning constructions of
  emotions about the change
• Negative emotions sad, worried, disappointment,
  frustration
• Positive emotions excitement, happy, joy

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Dependent Variables

• Performance of change implementation
• Subjective Supervisor ratings of unit
• Overall performance of implementing the change
• Effort exerted at implementing the change
• Objective Sales performance
• Change in sales after change, controlling for
  time of change

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Aggregation

• Unit of analyses
• Sensemaking data employee level
• Performance data unit level
• Aggregation tests
• Too much variability within units around
  sensemaking of change
• Examine individuals sensemaking as predictive of
  their group score vs. average sensemaking
• Group analysis
• Good apple, bad apple in the barrel approach
• Take the minimum and maximum values for each
  sensemaking variable for each unit

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Individual Level Results
Sales Performance (Objective) Supervisor Overall Assessment Supervisor Effort
Control (square feet) -.11 2.11 2.40
Negative sensemaking emotions -.02 -0.21 -0.16
Positive sensemaking emotions .00 1.21 0.88
Cognitive sensemaking .11 -.91 0.10
R2 F Test .08 3.07 .22 6.18 0.17 4.50
plt.05 plt.01
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Individual Level Results
Sales Performance (Objective) Supervisor Overall Assessment (Subjective) Supervisor Effort (Subjective)
Control (square feet) -.11 2.11 2.40
Negative sensemaking emotions -.02 -0.21 -0.16
Positive sensemaking emotions .00 1.21 0.88
Cognitive sensemaking .11 -.91 0.10
R2 F Test .08 3.07 .22 6.18 0.17 4.50
plt.05 plt.01
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Aggregate Min Model Results
Sales Performance Supervisor Overall Assessment Supervisor Effort
Control (square feet) -.18 2.06 2.38t
Negative sensemaking emotions -.20 -6.46 -1.07
Positive sensemaking emotions -.07 2.38 4.41t
Cognitive sensemaking .42 -3.94 -1.63
R2 F Test .29 3.90 .46 4.04 0.24 1.51, ns
T plt.10 plt.05 plt.01
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Aggregate Min Model Results
Sales Performance (Objective) Supervisor Overall Assessment (Subjective) Supervisor Effort (Subjective)
Control (square feet) -.18 2.06 2.38t
Negative sensemaking emotions -.20 -6.46 -1.07
Positive sensemaking emotions -.07 2.38 4.41t
Cognitive sensemaking .42 -3.94 -1.63
R2 F Test .29 3.90 .46 4.04 0.24 1.51, ns
T plt.10 plt.05 plt.01
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Aggregate Max Model Results
Sales Performance (Objective) Supervisor Overall Assessment (Subjective) Supervisor Effort (Subjective)
Control (square feet) -.14t 1.22 1.53
Negative sensemaking emotions -.02 .55 -.36
Positive sensemaking emotions .00 3.04 3.00t
Cognitive sensemaking .09 -1.53 .55
R2 F Test .09 .99, ns .34 2.46t 0.24 1.52, ns
T plt.10 plt.05 plt.01
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Summary of Findings

• Employees sensemaking based on emotions
  influences supervisor ratings of change, but has
  no impact on sales performance.
• Employees sensemaking based on cognitions
  predicts sales performance but has no impact on
  supervisor ratings.
• More positive emotions and less negative emotions
  might get unit accolades (or store manager
  promoted), but does not affect objective unit
  performance.
• Group level one bad apple spoils barrel but one
  good apple can lead to higher subjective ratings.

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Theoretical Implications

• Linked employee-level sensemaking to unit
  performance
• How employees make meaning of a change impacts
  performance
• The way managers subjectively make meaning of
  change performance not consistent with
  objective performance
• Resistance storytoo much attention (Ford et al.
  2008)
• Danger of subjective performance indicators hat
  dominate change research
• The importance (or lack thereof) of constructing
  positive meaning about ones work on objective
  performance

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Discussion

• What resonates most with you?
• How should I develop the subjective/objective
  story?
• Should I frame paper around this finding?
• Most of mechanisms theorized at individual level
  ideas for unit level theorizing.
• Because of lack of ability to aggregate, have
  both individual and unit level (min and max)
  results.
• Build a multi-level theory?
• Aggregation problems

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Other Ways I Can Use Your Help

• For average model, I use disaggregated results
  (ICC does not support aggregation)
• Main findings about emotions at group-level
• Main findings about cognitions at
  individual-level
• This does not seem elegant
• Any ideas?