Select SAGE journal articles are available to give you more insight into chapter topics. These are also an ideal resource to help support your literature reviews, dissertations and assignments.

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Erkama and Vaara show how senior managers in a Swedish company used neo-liberal rhetoric to legitimate the shutdown of a manufacturing plant in Finland, despite the fact that the plant was generating profit. To envisage alternative – and perhaps more socially, environmentally and ethically responsible – forms of strategic change requires us to reflect critically on these ideological systems of representation that present certain strategic options as fait accompli.

Reference: Erkama, N., & Vaara, E. (2010) ‘Struggles over legitimacy in global organizational restructuring: A rhetorical perspective on legitimation strategies and dynamics in a shutdown case’. Organization Studies, 31(7), 813-839

The role of sensemaking in shaping how change recipients make sense of the meaning of change – and how this sensemaking affects intended and unintended strategic change outcomes - is discussed by Balogun, J. and Johnson, G. in this article.

 Reference: Balogun, J. and Johnson, G. (2005), ‘From Intended Strategy to Unintended Outcomes: The Impact of Change Recipient Sensemaking’, Organization Studies, 26(11): 1573–1602

Cornellisen, Holt and Zundel propose that these two different types of strategic change make a difference to the method used for ‘framing’ the change, either using analogy or metaphor.  Appropriate framing is likely to assist the creation of legitimacy for the change in the eyes of important stakeholders (e.g. employees, customers, investors, etc.).

Reference: Cornelissen, J. P., Holt, R., & Zundel, M. (2011). The role of analogy and metaphor in the framing and legitimization of strategic change. Organization Studies, 32(12), 1701-1716

These are the journal articles associated with this chapter’s case study on strategic change at FitCo.

Reference: Whittle, A., Housley, W., Gilchrist, A., Mueller, F. & Lenney, P. (2015) Category predication work, discursive leadership and strategic sensemaking, Human Relations. 68(3) 377–407.

Reference: Whittle A, Mueller F, Gilchrist A, Lenney P. (2016) Sensemaking, Sense-censoring and Strategic Inaction: The Discursive Enactment of Power and Politics in a Multinational Corporation. Forthcoming in Organization Studies DOI: 10.1177/0170840616634127.