Joep Cornelissen and Henri Schildt discuss the sensemaking perspective and its potential for strategy as practice. Their review of past strategy as practice research suggests that sensemaking is largely used in a perfunctory manner in strategy as practice research. They argue that sensemaking provides a rich smorgasbord of theoretical constructs and models that is useful for strategy as practice research. However, they also maintain that moving beyond the application of sensemaking as an umbrella construct would provide important opportunities for more specific contributions. They discuss specific opportunities related to temporality, materiality and sensegiving in strategy as practice research and the role that the sensemaking lens might play in exploring these topics.

In chapter 6, Guarantee at last? (May 26 - June 1), it becomes clear that even though the Austrian parliament passed a law authorizing the government to guarantee Credit Anstalt’s deposits, the struggle is far from over. It is difficult to get information from Credit Anstalt and nervousness about Germany and reparations grows as the Austrian crisis is also developing into a currency crisis. International bankers set up an International Creditors Committee, while the BIS and the Bank of England insist on controllers being associated with the Credit Anstalt and the Austrian National Bank (ANB). Norman confesses to have difficulty separating cause and effect and he grows impatient with the BIS and the ANB.

In chapter 7, Releasing the BIS credit (May 29 - June 5), the BIS credit of 150 million schilling is released to the ANB as a moratorium is averted and a guarantee. Meantime, the issue of an Austrian government loan, re-emerges and it becomes clear that the French may not be able to or wanting to take the lead in organizing the loan. In Basel, the BIS is getting ready for the upcoming board and governors’ meeting, where the decision about another credit to the ANB will have to be discussed. Rodd prepares several notes and a plan for the meeting.

Chapter 13, Germany will collapse (June 19 - July 10) begins with everyone’s eyes on Germany where the uncertainty about the French position towards the Hoover plan increases every day. More generally, politics comes to play a larger role, as Norman increasingly emphasizes that it’s about politics, and Harrison has to take Hoover’s plan into account. At the same time leadership in the epistemic community of central bankers shifts away from Norman toward Harrison, who enters into a dialogue with French central bankers. Tensions arise between Norman and Harrison, as the begin to subscribe to divergent narratives of the situation and what needs to be done. In Germany, the situation gets more concerning by the hour, and Hans Luther travels to London and Paris in an unsuccessful attempt to secure a giant credit to the Reichsbank.

After a brief introduction to the outbreak of the Austrian Credit Anstalt crisis in May 1931 and the early response by central bankers from Bank of England, the BIS and the New York Federal Reserve Bank, this chapter proceeds to present the book’s overall issues and main concepts, which will be used as a heuristic framework throughout the narrative. The main concepts of the book are radical uncertainty, sensemaking, narrative emplotment, imagined futures and epistemic communities. In the chapter, I discuss how these concepts are helpful in understanding central bankers’, and other actors’, decision-making and practices in the five month from May through September. The chapter also discusses my analytical strategy and presents the empirical material, which comes from the Bank of England, Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the J.P. Morgan Archive, the Rothschild Archive and a few others. At the end of the chapter, I present the structure of the book.

Chapter 14, Aqnxiety within Germany at climax (July 11 - July 23). In this chapter tension reaches its climax as the Darmstädter und Nationalbank (Danatbank) fails on July 13. Without help from outside of Germany, the German government declares a bank holiday and introduces exchange controls, effectively ending the gold standard in Germany. The New York Fed and Harrison declines to intervene and the BIS does not have the resources or the inclination to intervene. Norman’s position that the situation goes back to the Versaille Peace agreement and is now a matter for governments strengthens. A conference in London is unable to come up with new solutions and meanwhile sterling comes under pressure. The fear of contagion beginning in early May is now a reality.

Chapter 18, The End (1931 - 2022). Since the narrative IS the analysis, there is no conclusion as such. Instead, The End provides a discussion of what a forward looking, thick description, humanistic approach to the financial crisis of 1931 have contributed to our knowledge in combination with the concepts embodied in the narrative. First, it is argued that the historical narrative provides new information exactly because writing the history forward brings out the uncertainty and need for sensemaking and narrative emplotment. This argument is discussed briefly in the context of the historiography of the 1931 crisis. Secondly, I ask what this narrative approach has contributed to our emprical and theoretical understanding of decision-making. By very briefly comparing with the Great financial crisis of 2008 I argue that uncertainty is a basic condition that requires sensemaking and narrative construction. I end by suggesting that rather than drawing lessons from history, history can be used as a way to reflect upon the past and the present.

Chapter 17, Exit (September 16 - October 23). In this chapter I follow the last few days before Britain leaves gold on September 21 after having exhausted the credits on the peg to the US dollar. The decision makes sterling decline by 20 per cent, which lead to massive losses not least for the Banque de France. J.P. Morgan is unhappy as well, seeing how the credits are gone with nothing to show for them. As Norman returns to Britain and the Bank, he is unhappy with the situation and Bank of England’s bad reputation following the devaluation. Rodd and Siepmann struggle to make sense of the situation, and Norman - some years later - expresses that it was all in vain. He was left ’a bitterly disappointed man.’ The narrative ends with this chapter.

Chapter 1 presents my “alternative fieldwork,” how I make sense of my predecessors’ fieldwork and fieldnotes. I introduce Xia Xizhou in its historical cultural context, including its colonial history and changing kinship, economy, and schooling system. I contextualize the multiple boundaries, identities, and relationships between the researched and the researchers and highlight children's agency. I recover the experience of native research assistants, not just as mediators between anthropologists and children, but as lively characters participating in children’s moral development journey. I expose the challenges of reconstructing this ethnography and the puzzles I encountered. I reveal the inherent ethical dimension of actions and interactions that made ethnographic knowledge possible. I also draw from my own experience and expertise to discern the voices, silences and voids in this archive. Throughout this chapter, I connect my discussion of reinterpreting historical fieldnotes to children's developing social cognition and moral sensibilities, which provides the foundation for intersubjectivity and communication in the original fieldwork and in the making of fieldnotes.

The preceding chapters reveal that a looming sense of crisis emerged in the BEF during and after the Battle of Passchendaele. Later, these weary men were faced with a major acute crisis – the spring offensives. Infantrymen were practically and psychologically ill-equipped to overcome this challenge. Using the concept of sensemaking, this chapter uses the records of a mix of regular, territorial, and New Army battalions drawn from six regiments to trace why men’s perceptions of battle may have changed and transformed. It charts their experiences during the optimistic days of early 1917, on the saturated battlefields around Ypres, amidst the chaos of Cambrai, in the tiring and demoralising winter of 1917–1918, and whilst facing the German onslaught after 21 March 1918. In early 1917, battle remained the imagined pathway to victorious peace. Yet, by the summer, the weather and Third Ypres left men’s hope of peace – and faith in battle – in tatters. The slow progress, casualties, and trying conditions convinced many that the war had become irreversibly static. These fears were confirmed as the BEF shifted to a defensive strategy. At the same time, esprit de corps was shaken by the BEF’s reorganisation in the new year. The work required to prepare the lines for defence was at the cost of effective training and the BEF retreated in the face of the German attacks. However, whilst the military outcome was sometimes in question, the spring offensives signalled a change in the character of the war in Belgium and France. Heavy casualties were inflicted upon the enemy, the army learnt on the job, and it appeared the conflict had entered a new phase. Somewhat counterintuitively, retreat and withdrawal rekindled soldiers’ faith in battle as the pathway to peace.

Employee resistance is often seen as the major force against the enactment of change. The literature has privileged the view that resistance, for the most extent, is the resistors’ own fault. As Ford and Ford put it, “the assumption is that they resisted a perfectly logical move.” I build on the approach that resistance to change is a form of feedback, to argue that, if organizations and their agents examine the underlying reasons, they will be better equipped to deal with the challenges related to resistance. In light of Uncertainty Reduction Theory, I also suggest that we need to move beyond the viewpoint that examines change as a one-off phenomenon and interpret it as grounded in the broader organizational life. Finally, and building on recent empirical evidence, I put forth a framework on anticipating intentions to resist future change that integrates the organization’s history of change, individual characteristics, leadership factors, and organizational factors, alongside important boundary conditions that influence the sensemaking process underlying the development of intentions to resist future changes.

Here I comment on the chapters that have formed the contribution of this volume. I note that this second edition makes contributions considerably beyond those of the first edition, in particular by devoting attention to the dynamics of planned organizational change, not simply its instigators and outcomes. In particular, the chapters contribute to several important themes associated with dynamics of planned change. These include ways of classifying types of organizational change, the importance of change leaders and the development of change leadership, the importance of both affective and cognitive processes (especially sensemaking) in change, the roles of several types of identity processes in change, and the recognition of temporal processes in change. The chapters show the salience of these dynamics, whether they are recognized or not, to sensitize scholars to look for them. I conclude by suggesting some possible new directions for future investigations of change. These include the use of process as well as variance theorizing, attention to change emergence, and attention to changes that extend beyond individual organizations.

Managers act as change agents on the frontlines of the day-to-day implementation of change processes at the same time as having to manage daily operations. This double role puts them under pressure to both implement change processes efficiently and emphasizes the need for tools and techniques to develop the change competencies of managers. This chapter addresses this issue by presenting a case study of a change management competency intervention. The intervention lasted four days of workshops and consisted of dialog exercises and serious-game simulations. The participating managers were presented with change dilemmas related to key change concepts such as change phases, change resistance/readiness, and balancing change and stability, with the aim to improve their change competencies. Drawing on interviews with managers participating in the training we analyze how the intervention challenged the managers’ perspectives on their change management and fostered learning and development of change competencies. The key role of sensemaking processes are analyzed to nuance and theorize the complexities of developing change competency.

Sensemaking is widely seen as one of the most crucial processes in crisis response operations. Frontline responders need an adequate understanding of a crisis situation to implement the appropriate actions. Gaining a better grasp of the situation requires acquiring more cues and avoiding premature commitment to a particular frame of reference. Ideally, operational members need to engage in adaptive sensemaking to achieve a perfect understanding of the crisis. Yet, crises are defined by uncertainty, which hinders a full understanding of the situation. The pursuit of a perfect understanding may also impede a rich awareness of the context and create blind spots. Thus, responders need to embrace some degree of uncertainty in their sensemaking as well, even though this is counterintuitive and demanding. The dilemma for responders is that they need to balance gaining a better understanding with embracing uncertainty. Frontline responders may deal with this sensemaking dilemma by pursuing a plausible understanding. A plausible understanding matches the demands of the situation and helps responders take bold action, but is also treated with an attitude of ambivalence, doubt, and modesty.