Change managerialism and micro-processes of sensemaking during change implementation

•We critically research micro-processes of sensemaking during change implementation.•We analyze how change managerialism shapes management's discursive and rhetoric change paraphernalia.•We illustrate how change managerialism disrupts sensemaking micro-processes.•We demonstrate how taken-for-granted enactments of managing change interweave with organizational change discourses, inhibiting sensemaking micro-processes.•We identify four sensemaking inhibitors: lifeworld colonization, detachment, discursive closure and constrained reflexivity.

In this article we critically analyze micro-processes of sensemaking during change implementation under a macro-level discourse of top-down planned change management, which we coin 'change managerialism'. We demonstrate how taken-for-granted enactments of managing change interweave with organizational change discourses and how this subsequently inhibits sensemaking micro-processes. Adopting a reflexive research methodology, this article contributes to the sensemaking of change literature by illustrating how change managerialism infiltrates an organization's managerial change discourse and sensemaking micro-processes, causing a disruption in sensemaking. Empirical material of a case study conducted at a professional services firm suggests these dynamics unintentionally inhibit sensemaking micro-processes and bracket off direct experience of the organization's change recipients through lifeworld colonization, detachment, discursive closure and constrained reflexivity.