This paper seeks to deepen the research on middle managers' strategic sensemaking roles. Until now, little research has explored how middle managers use their practical knowledge to realize their sensemaking role during strategic change in their daily activities. Here, through vignettes drawn from the authors' current research, a framework is developed showing that two micro-practices, "performing distributed conversations" and "enrolling networks", are critical in the accomplishment of this middle manager strategic sensemaking role. The paper also shows how these two micro-practices are underpinned by middle manager semantic and sociocultural knowledge, and that it is this practical knowledge that enables the middle managers to engage in these practices as part of their day to day activities and draw people in the change. The paper ends by discussing the challenges raised by the findings for capturing and analyzing the practical abilities of middle managers' strategic sensemaking roles.

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For more information on the research of this working paper please contact the author Julia Balogun

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