Strategic sensemaking as dynamic capability: How MNEs navigate institutional challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa

We examine how multinational enterprises (MNEs) employ contestable nonmarket strategies as political sense-making mechanisms to navigate institutionally fragmented environments in sub-Saharan Africa. Our contribution reconceptualizes sensemaking as a dynamic, political capability that enables proactive adaptation rather than mere cognitive interpretation. Through qualitative analysis of MNEs operating across multiple African markets, we demonstrate how firms strategically leverage duplicity, risk tolerance, social engagement, home support, and anticipatory embeddedness strategies to navigate institutional ambiguity. We integrate sensemaking with the dynamic capabilities framework, showing how sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring operate not only in market-facing strategies but in politically charged institutional arenas. Our findings illustrate how oscillatory and seemingly contradictory behaviors, such as simultaneous rule compliance and circumvention, serve as deliberate tools of strategic adaptation. We offer a novel theorization of how MNEs leverage ambiguity to build a competitive advantage in complex host environments. • MNEs accommodate contestable non-market strategies by oscillating between fraudulent and legal sensemaking responses. • Risk-tolerant MNEs employ contestable strategies to establish close relationships with manipulable government actors. • MNEs are increasingly developing sensemaking capabilities to engage more powerful Civil Society Organizations. • MNEs increasingly rely on support from their home countries to deal with challenging institutions in emerging markets. • MNEs selectively deploy contestable non-market strategies to position themselves to benefit from anticipated economic growth.