Explaining Employee Engagement with Strategic Change Implementation: A Meaning-Making Approach

Using a framework of meaning-making derived from social psychological research on how individuals manage adverse life events and research on sensemaking, we develop and test a theory about how frontline employees overcome the challenges of implementing strategic change. We find that certain types of meaning-making (strategy worldview and benefits finding) can create the requisite psychological resources that facilitate employees engaging in change implementation behaviors. The meaning-making change adaptation model (MCAM) we develop helps explain when and how employees adapt to change, thereby opening the “black box” of how to facilitate more effective strategic change implementation. We develop and empirically test the MCAM using qualitative and quantitative data from a Fortune 500 retailer.