Sensemaking and
Performance During Change:
Some Preliminary Ideas
Scott Sonenshein and Scott Baggett
Rice University
Research Question

How does an employee’s sensemaking about
change affect change implementation
performance?
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
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




Little research on how employees make sense of change (Bartunek
et al., 2006)


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)
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)
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)

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)
“Objective” performance:
But do manager’s 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?
“Objective” performance: But do manager’s
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?
“Objective” performance: But do manager’s
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
Approach



Context: Fortune 500 retailer integrating two divisions
Collected sensemaking of employees implementing the
change (n=143) 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
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
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
Individual Level Results
Sales Performance Supervisor Overall Supervisor Effort
Assessment
(“Objective”)
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**
* p<.05; **p<.01
Individual Level Results
Sales Performance Supervisor Overall Supervisor Effort
Assessment
(“Objective”)
(Subjective)
(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**
* p<.05; **p<.01
Aggregate Min Model Results
Sales Performance Supervisor Overall Supervisor Effort
Assessment
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 p<.10; * p<.05; **p<.01
Aggregate Min Model Results
Sales Performance Supervisor Overall Supervisor Effort
Assessment
(“Objective”)
(Subjective)
(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 p<.10; * p<.05; **p<.01
Aggregate Max Model Results
Sales Performance Supervisor Overall Supervisor Effort
Assessment
(“Objective”)
(Subjective)
(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 p<.10; * p<.05; **p<.01
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.
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 story—too 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 one’s work on objective
performance
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
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?