This study investigates how individuals respond to an institution. In particular, we attempt to illuminate the sensemaking process can be one of micro-foundations of organizational decoupling. Positing that the meanings of an institution can be differently interpreted by individuals, we elaborate the sensemaking process in the context of internship. In fact, internship has multiple meanings (such as education and employment) and interns have their own understandings on the internship. In this sense, we specify the process in which the meanings of internship are re-framed by individuals. We postulate that such re-framing process is derived from ongoing interactions between institution and actors. And it reveals a performative change in the meanings of an institution. As an institution, internship is originally conceived to facilitate the job training (i.e. education), but as individuals get through the internship, they re-define the meaning of internships into a kind of job position, (i.e. employment). In this study, through in-depth interviews of 10 undergraduate students in Korea, we disentangle the mechanism of the meaning-change process. Based on the process of sensemaking, our findings reveal that the sensemaking process can be specified into the nullification stage and re-definition stage. At the nullification stage, interns are tend to reject their original and ostensible meaning of internship, i.e. education. Rather, this rejection (i.e. nullification) leads to creating a new meaning, i.e. employment. With the nullified meaning of internship, interns tends to re-define the meaning of internship, which is deviated from its ostensible meaning. Such deviance of meaning, or the performative meaning of internship, indicates that the internship can be differently employed among different firms. And this results in organizational decoupling. Hence, our study can contribute to the literature on organizational decoupling in terms that the gap between expectation and experience can lead to a re-framing process of the meanings of an institution. Based on our findings, we provide theoretical and practical implications on the performative meanings of institution.