Purpose. Psychological contracts (PC) capture employees’ mental schema of the exchange agreement between themselves and their organizations, through which they make sense of their daily work environment (Rousseau, 2001). PCs are not only influenced by (large) organizational changes (Freese et al., 2011), …

The aim of this paper is to understand how employees, in their role of follower of change, frame upcoming change by studying the prospective stories they tell (n=110). This study complements the dominant retrospective approach to the research of employees’ change sensemaking. We incorporate forward-looking …

This study analyses how the social construction of integrity takes place within the context of football in the Netherlands. Combining a contex tual approach to sports integrity with the analytic lens of sensemaking, this qualitative multi-method case study analyses – in one extreme case in Dutch youth …

Sustainable commercial fishing, species conservation, and bycatch are contentious topics. Great emphasis has been placed on the sustainable sourcing of particular species that we buy at the store and order in restaurants, but how can we trust that the fish on our plates, from a system-wide perspective, …

When corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a sensemaking process is assessed from a corporate governance perspective, this implies that stakeholders do not only influence companies by promoting and enforcing regulations and other corporate guidelines. They also influence companies by promoting regulation …

The central research question in this study is: Which meaning is given to sustainability within a Dutch housing association and does making sense of the concept of sustainability lead to sustainable strategic choices? The chosen research strategy is a longitudinal case study in the Dutch housing association …

The range of studies that has been conducted on the role of gossip in organizations suggests that gossip in the workplace plays a variety of important roles in organisational processes. However, relatively few studies have explored its role in intercultural situations. This is surprising given how organisations …

The potential of a ‘data-driven life’, together with the realization of Weiser’s vision of ‘the disappearing computer’ have been embraced by many. However, the increasing invisibility, virtuality and complexity of data systems also come with a variety of concerns, such as issues of sensemaking, ownership, …

In this chapter, we study the inter-organizational response to the European migration crisis by using a collective sensemaking perspective. Collective sensemaking refers to the process by which organizations construct a shared understanding of an ambiguous and confusing situation, which subsequently …

This thesis addresses the emerging role of advisory boards in strategizing in privately held family firms. The thesis focuses on the period in which family firms start considering to work with an advisory board through the board’s first several years of existence. A micro-level strategy perspective …