The Sensegiving in the Process of Making Sense of the Strategy in Small Business Characterized as Hybrid Organizations

Abstract

Through the perspective of strategy as a practice, it is important to understand the process of sensegiving in the elaboration of the sense of strategy in small companies, characterized as hybrid organizations, understood from social business. It starts from the idea that the tensions inherent in these types of organizations require a sensegiving efforts in their narratives in order for their strategy to be shared. In order to understand sensegiving in the process of making sense of strategy in hybrid organizations, this paper takes the perspective of strategy as practice and constructs its argument into two parts. It presents strategy as practice and strategizing, focusing on the process of sensegiving and in the organizational narratives. Later, it brings the institutional logic, which gives support to understand the hybrid organizations. In this context, it has opted for analyzing and collecting empirical evidence through narrative interviews and secondary documents. The chosen field of research was the social business because it was considered an ideal type of hybrid organization. Two small organizations have been studied. They are here nominated as Alfa and Beta. It has been shown that the organizational complexity of social business is due to the tension between two logics that seem to be contrasting, but that allow an organization to operate in order to achieve its sustainability, since in the case of social businesses the market logic gives support to that, it is possible to achieve social benefit. However, given this apparent duality and contrast, these organizations need to reinforce their sensegiving effort for their narratives in order to assist their audience in understanding their strategies.