Making Sense of Environmental Complexity in a Reform Context: The Case of Megaproject Alpha

In this paper, new concepts on environmental complexity and sense making are developed and explored and analysed. The article based on a case study regarding a public-private collaboration in a Dutch infrastructural mega project. It is argued that the ability to influence the direction of the change process of the mega project “Alpha” depends on the way actors are able to influence the so aleed “cultural interfaces” into the power arena by means of a specific group of organizational stakeholders. After a short theoretical introduction, we describe the case in terms of two dominant cultural stages and their specific interface dynamics. The paper concludes with a general reflection on the central concepts.