The effect of team composition on strategic sensemaking

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Tanja Prinzessin zu Waldeck’s dissertation thesis explores the significance of strategic sensemaking in top management teams, focusing on how team composition influences these activities. Unlike previous studies, her research adopts a broader perspective by examining not only demographic factors like age and tenure but also the personalities of team members, leadership styles, and team culture. This approach incorporates insights from psychology into sensemaking research. Additionally, the study aims to provide a holistic view of the sensemaking process rather than concentrating solely on specific activities such as information sharing or scanning. It also considers the impact of organizational context, investigating how factors like organizational size, owner involvement in management, and ownership status affect team composition and sensemaking outcomes. The findings yield several valuable insights and three significant contributions to existing literature: they reveal how the makeup of top management teams differently influences strategic sensemaking, and they demonstrate that organizational factors can shape team composition and, consequently, their sensemaking processes.