Strategic Concepts As Micro-Level Tools in Strategic Sensemaking

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the role of concepts in strategic sensemaking. Based on a longitudinal real‐time study of a city organization, we demonstrate how the concept of 'self‐responsibility' played a crucial role in strategic sensemaking. We develop a theoretical model that elucidates how strategic concepts are used in meaning‐making, and how such concepts may be mobilized for the legitimation of strategic change. Our main contribution is to offer strategic concepts as a missing micro‐level component of the language‐based view of strategic processes and practices. By so doing, our analysis also adds to studies on strategic ambiguity and advances research on vocabularies