Daily Impact: Reflecting on Employee Experiences of Organizational Change

When the chaos of change rains down on your desk.
This dissertation highlights the importance of everyday change experiences in shaping employees' interpretation of, and contribution to, large-scale organizational change. The experience of organizational change is omnipresent in people’s daily work lives and encompasses both individual- and group level phenomena. In six chapters, this dissertation examines employees’ expectations and interpretations and discusses both their retrospective- and prospective sensemaking efforts. 
Moreover, this dissertation notes the role of change schemas held by employees to understand and shape their role in change. This dissertation proposes that employees tap into common, and socially shared, scripts to navigate their experiences. Those scripts entail different phases or episodes during change processes, with script holders’ orientations shifting between a focus on the past, present and future. 
The dissertation argues for a broader focus on the social context of change processes and emphasizes the importance of daily social exchanges within teams. By unravelling the periodized social dimensions of change interactions and events, we will better understand employees and their roles and behaviors in change. This knowledge can be used by managers, change agents, and employees to achieve change success altogether.