Identity, Image, and Issue Interpretation: Sensemaking During Strategic Change in Academia

We would like to acknowledge helpful reviews on earlier drafts of this paper from Michael Dooris, Janet Dukerich, Marlene Fiol, Kristian Kreiner, Ajay Mehra, and Majken Sqhultz. We also acknowledge the assistance of Shawn Clark, David Ketchen, Lee Ann Joyce, and Mark Youndt in the data analysis. This study investigates how top management teams in higher education institutions make sense of important issues that affect change in modern academia. We used a two-phase research approach that progressed from a grounded model anchored in a case study to a quantitative, generalizable study of the issue interpretation process, using 611 executives from 372 colleges and universities in the United States. The findings suggest that under conditions of change, top management team members' perceptions of identity and image, especially desired future image, are key to the sensemaking process and serve as important links between the organization's internal context and the team members' issue interpretations. Rather than using the more common business issue categories of threats and opportunities, team members distinguished their interpretations mainly according to strategic or political categorizations.'