That makes sense: ‘That makes sense: How Change champions navigate through obstacles to implement the strategic vision towards climate neutral 2035’
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2023-09-08
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en
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Abstract
Management concepts have gotten increasingly more
attention through the ye ars. Sch o lars
have written a con siderable a mount of literature a bou t the creation of management concepts
and the way they are translate d . Translation concerns the process of tur ning macro level ideas
into p ractical usefulness . Ideas are thereby subtracted from their initial context and
transformed to a new one . This process is often complicated by political mechanisms . In the
e xisting translation theory, the emphasis lays on the role of managers as main translators ,
however less is known about th e role of other actors in transla tion processes. That is w hy this
thesis looked at the role of a change champ ion eng aging in the transla tion of a man agement
concept . More specifically, the role of change champions translating sustainability into
prac tice. To do this the Dutch Water Au th orities served as empirical context The purpose of
this thesis was to explore which obstacles change champions encounter ed when translating a
management concept into practice and the tactics they employ ed to deal with those obstacles.
In ord er to investigate the obs tacles and tactics to deal with them, a se nsemaking and
sensegiving lens was u sed Further more the research design can be described as a qualitative
interviewing res earch in which eleven interviews were conducted with change champions, a
sen ior manager and board members. T he study re sulted in a four phase model showc asing the
translation process as described by the responden ts. Th is study highlight s the obstacle s change
champions encountered in differen t phases of the trans lation process It also uncovered the
manoeuvres champions de alt with those obstacles and addressed other actors by using
sensegiving tactics . The champions indicat ed that they had to get approval of the board to be
able to translat e sustainability into practice. This thesis thereby adva nces knowledge about the
roles of actors in translation processes and the use of sensemaking and sensegiving in a
pluralistic con text. Interestin gly, th is study also uncovere d that translating sustainability int o
practice was not al ways possib le due to various reasons.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen