Exploring Middle Managers Sense Making Processes in Organisations

This paper seeks to better understand the way middle managers contribute strategically to the development of an organization by examining how they perform in the strategic roles allocated to them, with particular reference to strategic change. The paper draws on sense making theory and the concept of practical knowledge. Through vignettes drawn from the authors‟ current research, a framework is developed showing that two activities: “enacting conversations” and “enrolling networks”, are critical in the accomplishment of the middle manager strategic sense making role. The paper also shows how these two skilled activities are underpinned by middle manager semantic and sociocultural knowledge, and that it is this practical knowledge that enables the middle managers to draw people into the change as they go about their day to day activities. This framework shows that two activities, enacting conversations and enrolling networks, are central to the way middle managers perform their strategic roles, and that these two activities are underpinned by semantic (language & symbolic representation) and socio-cultural (taken-for-granted ways of doing things) knowledge. These findings also contribute more broadly to the sense making perspective. Much research on sense making has focused on the conditions and context of sense making, with a primary concern for organizational processes of sense making. As a result less is known about how individuals perform their sneaking roles, and it is this gap this research starts to address. The focus on this individual performance shows how individuals reciprocally act within and shape their sense making context through their practical knowledge. This also enables the findings to contribute to the strategy-as-practice research agenda since we are starting to unpick the linkages between strategic action, skills and performance.