Making Sense or Betting on the Future? : Identifying Antenarratives of AI projects in a Large Financial Organization

Abstract

The future is uncertain, but what is certain is that we can make sense of the future through our ‘antenarratives’. In this study, I shed light on prospective sensemaking and apply the concept of antenarrative as a framework to identify how strategy practitioners make sense of AI projects. The empirical case organization is a large Finnish financial organization that aims to be a digital leader. The case organization is currently developing and implementing AI in its business operations, a recent and emerging wave in the financial business sector. Following a thematic analysis, the narratives that seem to either reflect positive (that promote) or negative (that impede) changes were examined. The results are twofold: practitioners ‘normalize change’ and ‘make meaning’ as positive prospective sensemaking, while as negative prospective sensemaking practitioners reflected on their ‘capability challenges’ and ‘dilemmas’.