In the international context, managers often face a contradictory imperative to organize the interpretive frames and actions of teams towards standardization/adaptation (a duality). Current etic approaches, entity perspectives, and variance models used to understand this phenomenon are limitative. Three inductive studies explore the role of managers from process perspectives and draw on theories of duality, sensemaking, and routines, to develop insights on how managers enact the work environment, use dynamic interpretations over time, and combine routinized and non-routinized behaviors to address the duality. The studies contribute to an open dialogue among different theoretical perspectives, opening new avenues for research.