Symbolic Convergence or Divergence? Making Sense of (the Rhetorical) Senses of a University-Wide Organizational Change.

Lina Ba,W G Will Zhao

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.690757

Abstract

This research investigates the extent to which organizational change initiatives may lead to divergent patterns of sensemaking among organizational members. Drawing on the symbolic convergence theory, we performed an in-depth fantasy theme analysis of organization members’ rhetoric around an organizational change at a private university. Our analysis uncovers six fantasy themes and two corresponding fantasy types, which lead to no rhetorical vision. The lack of cognitive convergence between change initiators and change recipients suggests the inherent incompatibility between managerial and employee fantasies around organizational change, barring the exceptions of dual-responsibility change recipients (e.g., faculty members who also assume administrative responsibilities), who tend to adopt the change initiator rhetoric. Overall, this study informs our extant knowledge of change sensemaking with novel theoretical and methodological insights and bears implications for organizational change researchers and practitioners alike.

Highlights

Organizational change has become one of the most prominent topics in organizational research over the past decades (Weick and Quinn, 1999), with much research conducted within the framework of sensemaking (Weber and Manning, 2001; Chaudhry et al, 2009; De Vos and Freese, 2011)
Interested in unpacking the sensemaking related to a universitywide organizational change initiative, this research performed an fantasy theme analysis (FTA) on the change-related rhetoric of different organizational members, including the change initiators and change recipients
The stark contrast between two collective patterns of sensemaking suggests the potential existence of competing rhetoric visions for different groups in a rhetorical community and the non-existence of an organizationwide rhetorical vision

Summary

Introduction

Organizational change has become one of the most prominent topics in organizational research over the past decades (Weick and Quinn, 1999), with much research conducted within the framework of sensemaking (Weber and Manning, 2001; Chaudhry et al, 2009; De Vos and Freese, 2011). Extant research has rarely approached organizational change sensemaking from rhetorical perspectives, despite the fact that rhetoric, or the purposive use of language to generate meaning (Hoffman and Ford, 2010; Zhao, 2017), has been regarded as an important mechanism to construct and reconstruct organizational facts (Alvesson, 1993) and to illuminate the emergence or obstruction of collective meaning in organizational life (Finstad, 1998) To fill this important gap in our knowledge, this paper draws on the symbolic convergence theory (SCT; Bormann, 1972, 1982) in qualitatively investigating the sensemaking of different organizational members implicated in organizational change, with the research objective to reveal the potential convergence and/or divergence of sensemaking by different members of a rhetorical community (Olufowote, 2017). While this new scheme was designed to boost staff morale, the contrary was observed, e.g., many instructors calling in sick, showing up late for class, taking annual leave in the middle of the semester, or start looking for new jobs elsewhere

Methods

Results

Conclusion