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This paper sets out to understand how immigrants to Canada (specifically Hong Kong immigrants) deal with competing senses of their situation in deciding how or whether to adjust to their new environment. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the “in-between state” of mind where individuals try to manage competing senses of their experiences in Canada.

The authors draw on critical sensemaking (CSM) in the study of the micro-processes of identity work at play among a group of 19 Hong Kong Chinese skilled immigrants to Canada.

The study’s findings indicate that immigrant experiences are often filtered through the competing sensemaking of the immigrants themselves and those of the so-called “host” community. As the study of Hong Kong immigrants suggests, this can lead to confused and compromised experiences of being an immigrant in the Canadian context.

The study was confined to immigrants to Canada from Hong Kong. Further study of different immigrant groups may throw light on the extent to which competing sensemaking is related to cultural differences that affect not only the distance in understanding but the management of that distance.

The paper contributes to the diversity management literature and practice through understanding immigrants’ identity construction and its oscillations, influences, and restrictions as agency in context.

The paper helps diversity managers, policy makers, and social activists to understand the role of sensemaking when providing social and structural support in workplace contexts.

The study reveals the importance of sensemaking in the experiences of immigrants to Canada. In particular, it broadens knowledge of the problems of adjusting to a new (national) environment from structural constraints to micro-processes of making sense. In the process, the study of the management of competing senses of an environment contributes to the development of CSM with the focus on, what we call, the state of in-betweeness.

Socially disadvantaged parents often concentrate on providing for their children instead of stimulating them to learn because of their own low self‐efficacy as learning agents. This study describes the development and pilot evaluation of a programme designed to empower new immigrant parents in Hong Kong to assume active, systematic and confident roles to teach their pre‐school children learning skills. A needs assessment was conducted to guide the development of the programme, which was also informed by research evidence and community engagement. A pilot trial was conducted and qualitative data were obtained from the participating parents. Parents reported improvements in their children's motivation to learn and the parent‐child relationship. The research provided information on programme design, delivery and implementation strategies. It suggested important entry points to engage and empower parents to provide timely stimulation to their young children.

This study explores the politics of ideology in the process of sensegiving and sensemaking at a Japanese retailer in Hong Kong. Studies on power and politics are scarce despite key role of power and politics in understanding the factors behind the conflict between the management's policy legitimization (sensegiving) and employees' policy interpretation (sensemaking). By using the three dimensions proposed in the critical sensemaking approach (discourse, rules and contexts), this paper explores the complex mechanism of power and politics in sensemaking and sensegiving.

Using 15 months of participant observation as a salesperson, this paper discusses how the Japan-centric customer service philosophy (dominant discourse), customer service policies and practices (organizational rules) and asymmetric power structure between the Japanese global headquarters and Hong Kong subsidiaries (formative contexts) are presented and perpetuated through the sensegiving–sensemaking process.

Dominant discourse was observed in the management's sensegiving, which placed the Japanese style of customer service over others. This ethnocentric dominant discourse informed the creation of customer service policies, although the realization of the discourse was determined by the employees' conflicting interpretations of the organizational rules. As a formative context, an asymmetric power structure was present that positioned the Hong Kong subsidiary as subservient to the global headquarters in Japan. This shows that the political process of sensegiving and sensemaking deeply implicates the dominant discourse, organizational rules and power structure as central forces that determine the level of perpetuating ideology.

This research illustrates the wider implications of power and politics in sensegiving–sensemaking studies and provides a complex picture of ethnocentric management.