The study was conducted at an organization that experienced a change of corporate ownership. The organization that underwent the change was part of an international company. After the buy-out, the organization became a part of another company, which also is established on the international market. This study aims to explain what composes the socialization process of employees during an organizational change of this kind. During organizational change employees undergo a process of socialization to create an understanding of the new structure that the change brings. The study aims to identify the key elements that compose employee’s socialization process. To identify the key elements a method based on interviews with nine employees was applied. The theoretical perspectives applied on the study were Internalization, Objectification & Externalization (Berger & Luckmann 1966), Sensemaking (Omar, Davis-Sramek, Fugate och Mentzer 2012, & Van Maanen, 1978 & Whelan- Berry, Gordon & Hinings, 2003) and two of the theoretical findings, Hangover and Group Exit (Ebaugh, 1988). The findings reveal five key elements, which make up the socialization process. The key elements are: Information, Expectation, Encouragement, Method of work and Conversation. Employees need explicit and accurate information about what the change entails. They also need to know what is expected of them and the kind of behavior that the organization promotes. Employees are also in need of knowing the specific method of work the organization advocates. The last key element employee’s need is various forms of interaction with colleagues.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to enhance the understanding of how organizations can improve their cyber security with change management. To fulfill the purpose, the following research questions were developed: RQ1: What are the key factors for effective change management in the context of cyber security? and RQ2: How can organizations manage these factors to improve cyber security? Method – A qualitative research method with an inductive approach was chosen. The empirical data collection was performed as a multiple case study with 16 semi-structured interviews with respondents from six organizations, and the data were analyzed through a thematic analysis. Result – The findings of this study is gathered in a framework for successful cyber security culture change that highlights each essential activity for how to improve cyber security with change management. It also shows when and how these activities should be performed, when to consider each leadership characteristic, and what employee sensemaking needs that should be considered during the process.  Theoretical contribution – The study contributes to both cyber security literature and change management literature. It contributes to the cyber security literature by providing a processual model that illustrates the factors dependency of each other. Also, by adding the perspective of sensemaking, the study provides an overall picture, with both a leader and employee perspective, of how change management can be used to improve cyber security. Additionally, this study extends earlier change management literature by providing a sensemaking approach to the change process. Managerial implications – The study contributes with valuable insights for management in practice by presenting a framework that can help CISO’s, security consultants or other managers responsible for the organizations security to execute successful cyber security culture change. With the presented framework, they can plan, execute and sustain the change in the organization’s cyber security culture.

Thesis advisor: Vincent Cho / The Role of Leadership in Social-Emotional Learning Implementation: Making Sense of Social-Emotional Learning Initiatives by Sarah J. Hardy Dr. Vincent Cho, Chair, Dr. Elida Laski, Reader, Dr. Ingrid Allardi, Reader Social-emotional learning (SEL) is an essential component of every student’s education. District leaders play an important role in the development and implementation of SEL programs in schools. This qualitative case study explored the strategies used by district leaders in supporting sensemaking of SEL initiatives as they were implemented. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with district and school leaders, focus group interviews with teachers, and a document review. Findings revealed district leaders employed strategies in the broad areas of setting direction, developing people, and redesigning the organization (Leithwood et al., 2004). However, there was no district-wide, unified vision for SEL programming, and the majority of SEL reform was advanced by principals. SEL interactions mostly occurred between principals and teachers, and between members of the teaching staff. SEL interactions were focused on essential principles of SEL initiatives, procedural information about SEL implementation, and crisis-driven support for individual students. Some interactions supported sensemaking. One recommendation of this study is to set a district-wide vision for SEL learning to align practices and provide a framework for principal autonomy. This study also recommends establishing structures that support collaboration in order to promote sensemaking through SEL interactions. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Higher Education (HE) institutions are constantly facing change. Accountability; the metaphor of student as consumer; a focus on management and leadership; and changing global economic conditions all affect the way institutions function. Recently, there has also been an increase in focus on accreditation procedures and organizational change. Although it can be difficult to measure the impact of quality assurance, this research focuses on exploring change and an accreditation procedure conducted by the Japan University Accreditation Association at a Japanese private university. Higher education institutions are social constructions and largely exist in the mind and as such, during change, some faculty members share values, rules of behaviour, and norms that become stabilized in institutional structures. This is due to the establishment of a common understanding. Conversely, there can be differences between groups in the institution. Thus, research needs to be conducted on how people make sense of change and their institution; the way information is processed and disseminated. By utilizing Ericson’s (2001) conceptual framework of four ideal types of meaning, and using Weick’s (2005) concept of sensemaking as a lens to examine the change, this research explores how faculty members make sense of change and accreditation and asks how far does this instance correspond to or otherwise illuminate Ericson’s (2001) conceptual framework for understanding change? This research contributes to our understanding of change, higher education institutions in Japan and accreditation, acknowledging the importance of effective management and leadership in HE institutions.

This thesis aims to analyse organizational change, focusing on the meanings attributed by participants in planned and unplanned processes of organizational change, in a large, UK hospitality company. Framed within the narrative meta-paradigm, this research employs a qualitative, interpretive, social-constructionist perspective, and considers change in organizations as constituted by alterations in people’s understandings, encoded in narratives, and shared in conversations. The thesis draws on prior publications in the fields of narrative and organizational change, including the sensemaking, power and identity literatures. Data was co-created through sixty-six semi-structured interviews in a single, multi-site case study, augmented by informal observations and assessment of written materials. The research account tells the stories of: organizational change; the responses from members to change; and the shifts in power, control and autonomy. These narratives of change were prepared through an interpretive analysis of the interview transcripts, and the study provides a reflexive commentary on the research, through vignettes of the researcher’s experience. In the discussion, three readings interpret the case study from a narrative, an organizational change and an autoethnographic perspective. The primary contribution of the thesis is empirical, providing an in-depth case study that describes a complex organizational landscape, at two luxury hotels, into which a managerial initiative, Shine, was launched, and addresses the limited presence of narrative case studies on change. Through the application of existing theory to this empirical resource, the thesis contributes to understandings of sensemaking, power and identity during continuous change. The study argues for the significance of reflexivity in storytelling research, and the need for practitioners to embrace the socially constructed nature of ‘realities’ in working with organizational change. More generally, the thesis has demonstrated the value of a storytelling approach to understanding the complexities of organizational change, while identifying limitations to plurivocal storytelling as a research method.

This thesis provides a situated understanding of the ways in which the reality of a new technology is socially constructed. In particular, it examines how members of the aged interpretive community made sense of the computer as an interruption event, a technology not yet routinised as part of their everyday taken-for-granted reality, and needing to be consciously considered and evaluated to make it understandable. Members' sensemaking is studied as a narrative process in which meaning is produced by drawing on a repertoire of narratives, evaluating and developing localised responses to those narratives for the purpose of action taking. Two hundred and four participants over the age of 55 years, recruited predominantly from senior citizens' and SeniorNet organisations in the North Island of New Zealand, were interviewed in 28 focus groups over an eighteen month period between September 2001 and May 2003. Participants were categorised according to their self-identified membership of one of three groups: computer users affiliated to SeniorNet member organisations; computer users without SeniorNet organisational affiliation; and non-computer-users. Their computer-related stories were analysed using narrative analysis to identify and map the similar and different ways in which they constructed computers and themselves in relation to computers, in the stories they told. The research findings from this interpretive study augment the largely functionalist literature on older people and computers and provide insights not identified in previous studies. In particular, the findings indicate that participants identified a common meaning for the computer as actually or potentially useful for older people, but their meanings also varied according to their membership of one of the three participant groups, with SeniorNet members tending to identify the computer as an opportunity; Users, as a tool; and Nonusers, as a threat. Participants' meanings were traced through a storying process that identified three narrative elements as key: the settings in which accounts of the principal protagonists older people and computers were produced; the strength of the narrator's identification with old stories and values; and the ways in which the narrators oriented to the computer in the context of other technologies and events, or in isolation from them. The study makes a contribution to knowledge by enhancing understanding of older people's relationships with computers, through a micro level investigation of their experiences with, and meanings for, the technology. In addition, by identifying and explicating the processes through which the ongoing reality of a new technology is constructed and negotiated, and compared and contrasted in relation to three separate sub-groups of the one demographic population, the study contributes to social construction of technology theory. The study also makes a contribution to practice by showing how the alignment of old stories and new stories is a crucial component in the process for enabling those new to a technology to negotiate an appropriate placement for it, and how such alignment can be influenced by age-peer groups and the imperatives of inter-generational family communication.

<p>År 1668 anlades Uddeholms första järnverk i Värmland och år 1873 grundades företaget Hagfors Järnverk. Sedan dess har företaget varit verksamt, idag under namnet Uddeholm Tooling AB. De senaste decennierna har konkurrensen på världens stålmarknad tilltagit och behovet av att vara produktiv är idag avgörande för Uddeholm Tooling AB:s överlevnad och välgång. Företaget ser sina anställda som sin viktigaste resurs för att möta den hårda konkurrensen. Således måste de anställda involveras och engageras i företagets produktivitetssträvan, som ett led i det implementerar Uddeholm Tooling AB ett förbättringsarbete, där Ordning och Reda är den första etappen.</p><p>I företagets förbättringsarbete har vår ansats varit att kvalitativt undersöka och problematisera medarbetares meningsskapande kring Ordning och Reda. Vi har valt att begränsa vår studie till medarbetarna i en av Uddeholm Tooling AB:s enheter; Terminalen, där vi har observerat och intervjuat delar av personalen kring förbättringsarbetet.</p><p>I alla former av förändringar tvingas människor att skapa sig ny mening. I det här fallet, för medarbetarna i Terminalen, skapas mening och därav tolkning kring förbättringsarbetet Ordning och Reda. Vår studie belyser vikten av transformerad kommunikation kring förändringar och de kulturella och institutionella kontexternas inverkan på meningsskapande. Vi hävdar att det inom Uddeholm Tooling AB finns en diskrepans mellan medarbetares och lednings åsikt gällande förbättringsarbetet Ordning och Reda. Uddeholm Tooling AB:s ledning ser Ordning och Reda som ett steg i att öka företagets produktivitet, medan medarbetarna i Terminalen ser samma arbete som ett städprojekt. Vi menar att medarbetare med skilda sociala verkligheter, baserade på organisationskultur, institutioner och tidigare meningsskapande, utifrån en given information ser olika betydelse och innebörd. Tolkningen av informationen skiljer sig markant åt, vilket återspeglas i medarbetarnas meningsskapande.</p> / <p>As early as 1668 the first ironworks were established in Värmland and since 1873 the enterprise has been located in Hagfors, now known as Uddeholm Tooling AB. Decisive for the survival of the business is to stress productivity in the fierce competition among the world’s producers. The employees are seen as the enterprise most valuable resource in its fight for survival and profitability. Therefore their participation is important in any improvements within Uddeholm Tooling AB. To improve the competitiveness of the enterprise, Uddeholm Tooling AB implemented Ordning och Reda, as the first step of four to become more productive.</p><p>We have made a qualitative study, aiming to concretize the understanding of the employees’ sensemaking regarding the work improvement Ordning och Reda. Our study is limited to one unit within Uddeholm Tooling AB; the Terminalen, where we have observed and interviewed the employees concerned.</p><p>By nature, people try to make sense of every alterations and new situations. In this case the employees make sense and create interpretations concerning the improvement Ordning och Reda. Our study stresses the importance of a transformed message based on the knowledge and awareness of the significance of organization culture and institutions. We argue that this is a crucial part of the creation of a uniformed meaning between parties. Within Uddeholm Tooling AB we have discovered a discrepancy among management and employees sensemaking about Ordning och Reda. Different social realities, based on cultural and institutional contexts, seem to conduct diverse interpretations.</p>

År 1668 anlades Uddeholms första järnverk i Värmland och år 1873 grundades företaget Hagfors Järnverk. Sedan dess har företaget varit verksamt, idag under namnet Uddeholm Tooling AB. De senaste decennierna har konkurrensen på världens stålmarknad tilltagit och behovet av att vara produktiv är idag avgörande för Uddeholm Tooling AB:s överlevnad och välgång. Företaget ser sina anställda som sin viktigaste resurs för att möta den hårda konkurrensen. Således måste de anställda involveras och engageras i företagets produktivitetssträvan, som ett led i det implementerar Uddeholm Tooling AB ett förbättringsarbete, där Ordning och Reda är den första etappen. I företagets förbättringsarbete har vår ansats varit att kvalitativt undersöka och problematisera medarbetares meningsskapande kring Ordning och Reda. Vi har valt att begränsa vår studie till medarbetarna i en av Uddeholm Tooling AB:s enheter; Terminalen, där vi har observerat och intervjuat delar av personalen kring förbättringsarbetet. I alla former av förändringar tvingas människor att skapa sig ny mening. I det här fallet, för medarbetarna i Terminalen, skapas mening och därav tolkning kring förbättringsarbetet Ordning och Reda. Vår studie belyser vikten av transformerad kommunikation kring förändringar och de kulturella och institutionella kontexternas inverkan på meningsskapande. Vi hävdar att det inom Uddeholm Tooling AB finns en diskrepans mellan medarbetares och lednings åsikt gällande förbättringsarbetet Ordning och Reda. Uddeholm Tooling AB:s ledning ser Ordning och Reda som ett steg i att öka företagets produktivitet, medan medarbetarna i Terminalen ser samma arbete som ett städprojekt. Vi menar att medarbetare med skilda sociala verkligheter, baserade på organisationskultur, institutioner och tidigare meningsskapande, utifrån en given information ser olika betydelse och innebörd. Tolkningen av informationen skiljer sig markant åt, vilket återspeglas i medarbetarnas meningsskapande. / As early as 1668 the first ironworks were established in Värmland and since 1873 the enterprise has been located in Hagfors, now known as Uddeholm Tooling AB. Decisive for the survival of the business is to stress productivity in the fierce competition among the world’s producers. The employees are seen as the enterprise most valuable resource in its fight for survival and profitability. Therefore their participation is important in any improvements within Uddeholm Tooling AB. To improve the competitiveness of the enterprise, Uddeholm Tooling AB implemented Ordning och Reda, as the first step of four to become more productive. We have made a qualitative study, aiming to concretize the understanding of the employees’ sensemaking regarding the work improvement Ordning och Reda. Our study is limited to one unit within Uddeholm Tooling AB; the Terminalen, where we have observed and interviewed the employees concerned. By nature, people try to make sense of every alterations and new situations. In this case the employees make sense and create interpretations concerning the improvement Ordning och Reda. Our study stresses the importance of a transformed message based on the knowledge and awareness of the significance of organization culture and institutions. We argue that this is a crucial part of the creation of a uniformed meaning between parties. Within Uddeholm Tooling AB we have discovered a discrepancy among management and employees sensemaking about Ordning och Reda. Different social realities, based on cultural and institutional contexts, seem to conduct diverse interpretations.

Denna studie undersöker hur samförstånd skapas genom kommunikation i en organisationsförändring. Detta är intressant då tidigare studier visat på att kommunikation är en avgörande faktor för att en organisationsförändring ska bli lyckad. Det är också intressant då forskning kring den interna kommunikationen vid organisationsförändringar är sparsam. Speciellt då vi även valt att se kommunikationen utifrån en mottagares perspektiv, ett område som var särskilt outforskat. Vi har hämtat vårt empiriska material från en organisation som stod inför en organisationsförändring. Denna förändring grundade sig i två underliggande problem; organisationen behövde omstruktureras för att kunna växa, organisationen ville bli oberoende av en annan organisation som varit en långvarig samarbetspartner.Syftet med studien var att ur ett kommunikationsperspektiv undersöka huruvida samförstånd skapas mellan ledningen och de anställda i en organisationsförändring. Det teoretiska ramverket bestod huvudsakligen av teorier om framing och dess tre ”Core framing tasks”, samt teorin om Sensegiving/Sensemaking. Studien beskriver hur ledningen i förberedelsefasen kommunicerade information om förändringen till de anställda. Dessutom undersöks personalens uppfattning av denna kommunikation. Studien bygger på intervjuer med ledningen och de anställda samt deltagande observationer av ett informationsmöte och ett nyhetsbrev. Resultatet av studien tydde på att ledningen har varit bristfällig i delar av sin kommunikation, men de anställda uppvisade trots detta en vilja att genomföra förändringen på grund av ett starkt förtroende för ledningen.

The outsourcing literature has offered a plethora of perspectives and models for understanding decision determinants and outcomes of outsourcing of business processes. While past studies have contributed significantly to scholarly research in this area, there are an insufficient number of studies that are provider centric. Consequently, there is a need to understand how service providers address a core challenge: to achieve scalable growth by developing standardized offerings that can be sufficiently customized to meet the unique demands of individual customers. This study explores how patterns of collective action within and between a provider and two of their largest customers relate to the tension between standardization and customization of information technology (IT)-enabled service provisioning. Specifically, it investigates the relationship between such behavioral patterns and the development of an enterprise architecture designed to address the tension between standardization and customization. A socio-cognitive sensemaking framework consisting of six core properties provides the analytical lens through which the relationship is investigated. The study adopts an interpretive case study methodology guided by the assumption that distinct dimensions of the social world exist, but understanding them comes from inter-subjective interaction between researcher and subject. The approach adopts a combination of literal and theoretical replication strategies (Yin 1994) to help identify similarities and dissimilarities during cross case comparison. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews, direct observations, participant observations, and analysis of documentation and archival records. Our findings suggest that localized action at the expense of global coordination exacerbates the tension between standardization and customization. Furthermore, attempts to address the tension through the logics of spatial and temporal separation proved largely ineffective, as these initiatives put added pressure on the sensemaking processes responsible for guiding collective action. Our findings further suggest that a paradigm modification might be useful for service providers, where they shift their focus from reducing equivocality to improving their internal ability to respond to it. The results of this study contribute to a large body of outsourcing literature that has too often neglected a provider centric perspective. By uncovering key factors that exacerbate the tension within and between organizations, and providing practical methods for addressing them, this study also offers valuable insight for practicing managers.