Building upon the extensive scholarship on organizational change from a processual perspective, as well as incorporating the theoretical insights from the field of organizational social movements, this article suggests that contemporary changes should be view as "hybrid" processes, combining both top-down and bottom-up approaches, in order to better understand their complexity. Drawing on the sensemaking process perspective, we focus on the Thales Group culture change in the context of its digital transformation, based on a deliberate social movement like strategy. We describe the double mechanisms and challenges of hybridization, and how social aspirations of the internal activist’s community generated a sensemaking drift, affecting the purpose and the process of change. The challenges and opportunities for implementing hybrid cultural change in multinational companies are discussed.
