Domains of Emergent Change: Making Sense of Emerging Patterns in the Midst of Change

Abstract

This paper explores change leader sensemaking of emerging patterns in the midst of change. Drawing on complex adaptive systems theory, we argue that change leaders are neither prime movers, nor passive recipients of emergent organizational change. They actively co-create emerging macro-level patterns through everything they say and do as they interact with other organizational members. How change leaders make sense about emerging macro-level patterns plays an important role in emergence. Yet, we know little about the content or challenges of that sensemaking from the perspective of change leaders. Using a real- time, multi-level study of an organization and its change leaders in the midst of change, we followed the emerging patterns of change over a particularly dynamic 2-year period, and found that making sense of them is challenging work for change leaders. Although emergent change outcomes cannot be predicted, our identification of ‘domains of emergent organizational change’ (the ‘patterning of events’, ‘changing patterns of relations’, ‘changing patterns of attention’), and a multi-level typology for their classification, may help scholars and change leaders to theoretically anticipate and make sense of emerging organizational patterns.