Making Sense of Organizational Change How a shift from bottom-up to top-down budgeting is perceived and enacted across organizational levels

Abstract

This study examines how a shift from bottom-up to top-down budgeting is interpreted and enacted across organizational levels. Drawing on a qualitative case study based on interviews with senior, regional, and local managers, the study adopts a sensemaking perspective to explore how budgeting reforms unfold in practice. The findings show that the reform did not emerge through a single, coherent act of top-management communication, but through uneven and ongoing sensegiving embedded in everyday budgeting practices. As a result, organizational members developed different interpretations depending on their roles and contexts. The study further demonstrates that effective enactment depends on the alignment of complementary roles across levels, where top managers provide strategic direction, regional managers translate meanings, and local managers validate and operationalize targets. In addition, the findings highlight a persistent tension between centralized, data-driven control and locally grounded knowledge, which must be continuously reconciled. Finally, the study shows that local accountability is not reduced under centralization but shifts toward the interpretation and operationalization of centrally defined targets.