The existing literature on strategic sensemaking has focused on how strategy actors bracket, interpret, and enact issues which are related to strategy content. However, there are indications that strategy making involves not only sensemaking of the strategy content but also sensemaking of the strategy process, meaning that actors must also interpret the process by which they come to make sense of strategy content issues. 

Drawing on a longitudinal case study of strategy making in an international finance firm, Prof. David Seidl examines how sensemaking of the strategy process unfolds over the course of a strategic planning process. The findings of his study reveal the entangled relationship between sensemaking about strategy process and content, and how this affects the strategy content that emerges. 

In doing so, Prof. Seidl’s study contributes to the sensemaking literature by conceptualizing strategic sensemaking as a dual and dynamic process in which sensemaking of strategy process provides subtle opportunities for indirect influence over the development of strategy content.

David Seidl is Professor of Organization and Management at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and a former Associate Editor of the journal Organization Theory and Organization Studies. His research interests include the practice of strategy and strategic change, the dynamics of organizational routines and the dynamics of standardization. 

He has published widely in leading international journals including Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management and Organization Science. He is author and editor of several books including the Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice, the Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics and the Cambridge Handbook of Open Strategy.

You can learn more about Professor David Seidl here.