The Role of Sensemaking in Constructing Agents of Change

Abstract

The use of agents to facilitate change in healthcare organisations is widely advocated. Organisational literature distinguishes between a variety of different types of agents (champions, opinion leaders and change agents), but we know little about how this distinction is implemented in practice and how different organisational members make sense of the role. Using sensemaking theories we study a case of large-scale organisational change and consider how senior managers, middle managers, and agents sensemake and enact change facilitating roles. We examine how this process determines successful organisational outcomes. We found that when new agent roles are accompanied by ambiguous managerial sensegiving, the accompanying sensemaking was dispersed and subsequently front-line role enactment was less effective. This suggests that for successful change senior management need to clearly distinguish the definitions and boundaries of this role.