Narratives, Sensemaking and Ontological Security in Turbulent Environments

Organizations today operate in environments marked by constant change. Digitalization, shifting demographics, economic pressures, and global uncertainties are reshaping how people work and relate to their professional contexts. Organizations are faced with continuous restructuring, technological advancement, and evolving professional roles, resulting in a constantly changing—or in other words, turbulent—environment. This dissertation explores how individuals use narratives to construct or maintain ontological security in such turbulent environments.
Sensemaking is the ongoing process through which individuals interpret their environment to maintain a coherent and plausible understanding of themselves and the world around them. This understanding can then guide their actions and further interpretations. In turbulent contexts, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, disruptions to routine can challenge this understanding and threaten ontological security—that is, a fundamental trust that the world and one’s role within it are stable and consistent with everyday experience. Narratives play a key role in this process, helping individuals make sense of change and express their roles within it. Narratives serve both as tools and outcomes of sensemaking, shaping how individuals navigate uncertainty and maintain a sense of self.
Although sensemaking has received considerable scholarly attention, the function of narratives in this process—particularly their agentic and structuring roles—remains underexplored. More research is needed to understand the origins of narratives and their influence on the people who share them. This dissertation addresses that gap by combining narrative sensemaking with the concept of ontological security, revealing how narratives operate on both conscious and taken-for-granted levels.
The first paper, co-authored with Emma Nordbäck and Niina Nurmi, examines how knowledge workers justified their decisions regarding remote and hybrid work during and after the pandemic. It shows how personal values and social norms shaped choices and provided a sense of stability. The second paper, co-authored with Christina Söderberg, explores why nurses chose to leave their profession, uncovering a deep dissonance between professional identity and the realities of nursing work. This study highlights how ethical and personal values were used to preserve a sense of self amid occupational change. The third paper investigates a failed change initiative in a hospital, focusing on how power dynamics and competing discourses—managerial, medical, and nursing—influenced employees’ sensemaking and ultimately shaped the outcome of the transformation.
Together, these studies offer a nuanced account of how individuals use narratives in different ways to navigate complexity, resist or embrace change, and maintain ontological security. The findings contribute to theoretical discussions on narrative sensemaking and offer practical insights for leaders and policymakers seeking to understand human responses to organizational turbulence.