| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores how Plan International Norway as a non-governmental organization (NGO) makes sense of increased digitalization due to the forced conversion to home office during COVID-19, and how digitalization alters the assumptions, roles and work of the organization. Research shows that modern digitalization is profound and complex, and pervasially changes organizations (Hanelt et al., 2021). An organization’s ability to understand contextual changes have shown to impact its ability to successfully adapt to digital transformation (Verhoef et al., 2021; El sawy et al., 2016) – a phenomenon that nevertheless has been sparsely studied through the sensemaking perspective (Takkunen, 2021, p. 24). Sensemaking theory assumes that humans retrospectively interpret their actions and makes situations comprehensible (Weick et al., 2005). It has been widely used to understand how organizations make sense during periods of great change, characterized by contingencies (Weick, 1993; Schildt et al., 2020). Thus, with COVID-19 as a starting point, the overall research question of this master’s thesis is: How do the employees of an NGO make sense of digital work life due to COVID-19, and how does this affect the organization’s perception of its future role within humanitarian work? The thesis is divided in the following two analytical research questions (RQ): RQ1: What are the characteristics of change and digitalization that has taken place within Plan? RQ2: How does clashing institutional pressures affect Plan as a humanitarian organization within a digital age? Drawing on sensemaking theory, I will describe how sensemaking processes have been triggered and evolved as a result of organizational changes, turbulence in work routines and adapting to digitalization. Additionally, neoinstitutional theory is further used to illustrate how different institutional pressures affect Plan as it adapts to digital transformation while simultaneously preserving its organizational identity. Finally, using prospective sensemaking theory, the employees’ predictions of Plan’s future role and work within the humanitarian field are illustrated – predictions based on new understandings of the role of digitalization within Plan and humanitarian work. The data used in this thesis was collected during a previous student project, in which five fellow students and I interviewed employees at the humanitarian organization Plan International Norway. The interviews include the employees’ discussions about possibilities and challenges of increased digitalization due to COVID-19 and the forced conversion to home office. Six of these in-depth qualitative interviews were used and inductively analyzed in this thesis. The choice of reusing this data was to further investigate how the employees make sense of digitalization and how this in turn affects their perception of the organization’s role. My findings portray how the conversion to home office and the increased digitalization resulted in an episodic change of Plan’s daily practices and communication patterns, which the employees strived to make sense of by improvising and searching for ways to utilize digital technologies in ways to support their humanitarian work. However, as the dynamic patterns of social interactions were disrupted, shifting from face-to-face interactions at the office to digital channels, so too were the arenas in which sensemaking usually thrives. This resulted in individual discrepancies in their understandings of how Plan and digitalization can merge and how Plan can benefit from digitalization in the future. In line with previous research (e.g., Warner & Wäger, 2019; Takkunen, 2021), my study indicates that sensemaking of digitalization is vital in order to align understandings of digital transformation with existing conceptualizations of organizational identity practices. From a macro perspective, my findings suggest how digital transformation leads to radical institutional change (Hinings et al., 2018), which implies new ways of organizing that changes collaborations and communication patterns within the field of humanitarian work. Consequently, digitalization disrupts Plan’s routine processes and role as an intermediary between donors and receivers. Canceled visits due to COVID-19 restrictions have resulted in less direct monitoring and “controlling” of the implementation of humanitarian projects, which in turn may lead to the transferring of power and increased agency to the employees of Plan’s local subsidiaries in developing countries. My study illustrates that Plan’s challenge in adapting to digitalization is to identify ways in which digitalization can be aligned with its organizational purpose, attributes and processes. This must be done in a way that ensures legitimacy in an era of digitalization, while simultaneously maintaining its NGO identity in line with humanitarian goals and visions. | eng |