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The Influence Of Social Position On Sensemaking About Organizational Change

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The Academy of Management Journal

Published online on

Abstract

Traditionally, scholars have examined the influence of actors' sensemaking on context; in this paper we explore the reverse. Employing Bourdieu's Theory of Practice we explore how actors' unique contexts, as encapsulated by their social positions, provide the important "raw materials" for their sensemaking. Drawing on a case-study of three focal actors, located in different social positions in the English National Health Service, but tasked with enacting a common organizational change, we explore how actors' capital endowments and dispositions shape their sensemaking about organizational change. To synthesize our findings, we develop a theoretical model of the influence of social position on sensemaking.