Abstract

Digital transformation (DT) is a topic that has attracted significant attention from both academia and practice. However, existing research often relies on organisational change models and focuses on outcomes and success or failure factors, overlooking DT’s processual, human-centred, and context-specific nature. Addressing these gaps, this study is based on sensemaking theory to study how organisational agents collectively conceptualise DT. Drawing on a case study of a large Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE), we identify five sensemaking episodes and three reinforcing mechanisms: technology perception divergence, information distortion, and experience asymmetry. These mechanisms amplify role-based tensions, leading to forced meaning reconstruction and dual-track compliance systems. The study contributes a process understanding of DT sensemaking, revealing boundary conditions for sensemaking theory and offering practical guidance for SOE leaders and regulators to align strategic intent with operational realities. More specifically, it shows how organisational contexts can turn sensemaking from a tension-resolving process into a tension-reinforcing one, as restricted communication and asymmetric access to information progressively widen interpretive differences.

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