The Power Of The Platform: Place And Employee Responses To Organizational Change

This inductive study explores how place influences collective sensemaking and employee responses during organizational change. The empirical setting of our study is an offshore oil platform undergoing changes that involve standardizing operational practices and relocating personnel as two organizations merge. We analyze the narratives of two employee groups and show how employees located onshore construct progressive change narratives, enabling them to adapt to change, while employees located on the offshore oil platform construct regressive narratives leaving them romanticizing the past and struggling to accept change. Our findings illustrate how the manipulation, reconfiguration, and exploitation of place has implications for employees' capacities to accept and adapt to change.