Dancing in the dark: Making sense of managerial roles during strategic conversations

• Analyze how managers make sense of their strategic roles during conversation.
• Detail the organization of two extracts of conversation.
• Demonstrate how managers construct contradictory conceptions of their roles.
• Show how the construction and contestation of roles rely on scripted descriptions.
• Point out that participants’ will to power contributes to the oscillation among versions of role.

This article explores how managers make sense of their strategic roles when confronted with contradictory expectations from top management. Relying on Edwards and Potter’s version of discourse analysis (DA), we analyze extracts of conversations between a director and a team of managers as they strive to elaborate a strategic project for a large association within the social sector. Our research complements prior research on managerial roles in (1) showing that the sensemaking of managerial roles relies on the construction and contestation of scripted descriptions of the organization and its environment, (2) demonstrating how the managers and the director both contribute to the fabric of contradicted versions of the managerial roles and (3) how participants’ will to power contributes to the “dance” observed.