Purpose The purpose of this paper is to advance micro-level theorising of sociocultural post-merger integration (PMI) by merging insights from international business and management research on the cognitive and affective dimensions of PMI. Design/methodology/approach The paper follows a narrative approach to review the previously separate literatures on cognition and emotion in PMI situations. It draws on insights from management research beyond the PMI context to integrate these literatures and as a result, develops a process model of emotional sensemaking in PMI. Findings An emotional sensemaking approach to PMI helps to explain when and why events might or might not motivate individuals to revisit their interpretation of a PMI and illustrates how and why similar PMI events can lead to opposite individual reactions and, thus, obtain heterogeneous integration outcomes. Research limitations/implications The paper discusses how an emotional sensemaking approach can be applied to sociocultural PMI and points to new directions for future studies based on this application. As the model concentrates on the individual level, theoretical implications for sociocultural PMI at the meso- and macro-levels remain limited. Originality/value This paper brings forward the dynamics that underlie the processes and outcomes of individuals’ behaviour and reactions to PMI events. The proposed process model of emotional sensemaking in PMI responds to recent calls by sociocultural PMI scholars to promote a processual rather than event-based view of PMI, with a focus on individual actors and an emphasis on the multifaceted dynamics and outcomes of PMI.

In this article, we review management and organizational research that describes and explains "organizational body work"purposeful, organizationally embedded efforts to shape human bodies. We conceptualize human bodies in terms of three dimensions-materiality, meaning, and functionality-and argue that organizational body work is constituted by programs of purposeful effort involving activities situated in and shaped by organizational life. Based on a review of 210 articles and books that feature descriptions of organizational body work, we unpack the concept in three main ways. First, we offer an inductively developed process model of organizational body work that comprises five key themes: the triggers, forms, consequences, contexts, and the variations of bodies targeted. Second, a key observation that emerged from our review was that organizational body work is animated by a set of organizational tensions, and so we explore three such tensions situated in the cultural, health, and political dynamics of organizational life. Third, we suggest eight directions for future research intended to illustrate and inspire, rather than set boundaries around the study of organizational body work.

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