Living another story of change management teaching: a phenomenological sensemaking experience of otherness (alterity)

In an increasingly complex world, teaching change management has become a crucial focus for management learning and education. While the literature focuses on a planned change approach, teaching based solely on this approach does not enable students to grasp the complex reality of change and the different ways in which organisational actors perceive change. To fill this gap, we propose to deploy a phenomenological approach of sensemaking, which enables students to grasp this complexity, and to deal with ‘other' during change situation. To engage students in such dynamic, we built a pedagogical innovation based two artefacts: the individual production of a comic strip on past change experience and the production of a collective image of change using an analogy. The results show how, through the two teaching sequences (one per artefact), the students open up to the field of possibilities and project themselves to act with other. They also underline the emergence of a "mutual coping" that enables students to become aware of the perspectives of otherness and acknowledge intersubjectivity. The main contribution highlights the importance of intersubjectivity as a foundation for developing students' critical reflexivity and shows the value of moving beyond linear and simplistic thinking to address the complexity inherent in organizational phenomena.