The aim of this paper is twofold. The first is substantive: to shed light on the structural conflicts and contradictions that run through first-line manager (FLM) roles where routine supervision has been supplemented by wider management responsibility for business performance and customer service and on how FLMs themselves interpret and handle these conflicts through the ways in which they construct their identity and enact their role. This paper presents an analysis of two case studies of FLMs in their organisational context which traces the relationship between the structural conditions that shape the way in which the FLM role is defined and the subjective meaning-construction that shapes how the role is interpreted and enacted, and, in so doing, draws upon both 'critical realist' and 'sense-making' perspectives. Thus the second aim of this paper is to offer some methodological reflections on the possibilities and limitations of using critical realism and sense-making as complementary analytical frameworks and the implication this has for the problem of paradigm commensurability. It is argued that critical realism and sense-making are complementary, rather than syncretic, and can be deployed in tandem to generate cumulative interpretations of different facets of a problem.