Making Sense of Sensemaking in Organization Studies

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

PurposeThe paper explores processes associated with the adoption of corporate sustainability communication in a B2B context. It employs a combined action research and sensemaking approach to document moments that precede the initiation of external sustainability communication.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is the outcome of an action research project, where we examine the case of one industrial company that was silent on its multiple sustainability-related practices, but recently decided to become more transparent to the outside world. A processual approach to sensemaking is adopted to show how organisational and non-organisational members actively participated in meaning co-construction.FindingsCorporate silence can be disrupted by triggering events that cause moments of sudden realisation for organisational members, eventually leading to the initiation of sensemaking processes inside the organisation. Once this occurs, the possibility of externally communicating sustainabili...

International Peacekeeping

This article examines sensemaking in complex peace operations. The article's key argument is that adaptation to 'the local' and its complexity requires sensemaking, and that sensemaking helps to disrupt conflict dynamism and prevent conflicts. The study's theoretical underpinnings are linked to the concept of sensemaking and its further development. The findings are based on eleven in-depth interviews with commanders who have concrete command experience in peace operations. The research findings describe four processessensegiving, sensebreaking, sensedrawing and sensekeepingthat are part of the sensemaking entity. Each process entails practices in which sense is embedded, negotiated and regenerated to be shared, in order to work with change, adapt to local necessities and sustain peace. Theoretically, the article contributes to the existing understanding of complex, ongoing and longstanding crises in general and adaptive and proactive sensemaking, in which 'the local' is emphasized, in particular.

Journal of Organizational Change Management

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of how sensemaking occurs as a holistic, processual phenomenon during an organisational change. Design/methodology/approach A longitudinal, qualitative case study was conducted by analysing video-recorded meetings among the staff of two recently merged surgical departments in a university hospital. Sensemaking was approached through the lens of socio-material practices. Findings The analysis revealed that material-discursive practices produce sensemaking in various ways, creating a holistic process and a dynamic agency. Four sensemaking practices were identified through which personnel made sense of the development of ward inpatient rounding: facilitated meetings, a status board, video analysis and humour. Originality/value This paper identifies diverse sensemaking practices, each of which increases understanding of sensemaking as a holistic, processual phenomenon that emerges through socio-material practices. The paper ...

2021

Gossip is pervasive at the workplace, yet receives scant attention in the sensemaking literature and stands on the periphery of organization studies. We seek to reveal the non-triviality of gossip ...

Leadership

The notion of leadership competencies is a much-debated issue. In this article, we propose that how the leader makes sense of his or her competencies is key to leadership practice. Specifically, we look at how leaders reconcile discrepancies between the self-perceived proficiency of various competencies and their corresponding importance. Empirically, we study leaders within the music domain – how choral conductors make sense of their competencies in the shaping of their professional practice. We investigated how choral leaders in Scandinavia ( N = 638) made sense of their competencies in the face of demands in their working situations. A mixed methodology was used, comprising a quantitative survey with qualitative comments and in-depth interviews with a selection of the respondents. The results show that when choral leaders shape their practice, they frequently face competency gaps that compel them to act or adjust their identity. The key to this sensemaking process is how they mov...

Project Management Journal

This study investigates project participants’ sensemaking of lived work experiences during periods of organizational change within Finnish public healthcare. It introduces a discursive sensemaking perspective to investigate lived experiences, that is, reflexive practitioners’ situational thinking. Drawing upon 17 interviews, the study identifies diverse repertoires through which the lived experiences are considered meaningful. These are repertoires of: (1) transformation, (2) realism, (3) politics, (4) individuality, (5) reflexivity, and (6) senselessness. The results show that project-based work in public healthcare differs from project participants’ expectations because projects are perceived to increase rather than decrease bureaucracy and include unsustainable working conditions that have to be endured.

Organization Studies

Coordination theories are characterized primarily by a focus on integration, in which coordination is aimed at achieving a coherent and unified set of actions. However, in the extreme settings in which fast-response organizations operate, achieving integration is often challenging. In this study we employ a fragmentation perspective to show that dealing with ambiguity and discontinuity is not only inevitable for these organizations, it is a key characteristic of coordinating. We undertook an inductive, qualitative field study on how officers in command from the fire department, medical services, and police coordinate during emergency response operations. Our data are based on a four-year multi-site field study of 40 emergency management exercises in the Netherlands, combined with 56 retrospective interviews. Our inductive analysis of this data shows that officers use three coordination practices to deal with ambiguity and discontinuity: working around procedures, delegating tasks, a...

Journal of International Migration and Integration

Migrants entering a new country also search for belonging. Through employment, migrants work in organizations and experience socialization in these new contexts. Thereby, organizations offer migrants a wide range of possibilities for identification and are thus places to regain a sense of belonging. We rely on prior research showing what migrants experience during the process of organizational socialization to organizational identification, more specifically through (a) sense-making which (b) provides self-esteem and self-enhancement, and (c) reduces uncertainty. Furthermore, we also investigate the interplay of various in-groups (multiple cultures) and levels (micro, meso, macro) that migrants identify with. Consequently, we follow a cross-level approach to identity in and beyond organizations and combine migration, organizational, and intercultural research. Based on a qualitative interview study in Germany, we highlight how positive organizational identification results not only ...

Management and Organization Review, 2015

ABSTRACTWith this perspective paper, we seek to help open up an additional and, we believe, especially promising avenue for indigenous management research. We explore the potential for progress through the investigation of executive rationale, an institutional logic guiding managerial action and enabling strategies, structures, and formal integration mechanisms. Drawing on interviews with an elite group of executives including some of the world's most powerful managers, we illustrate variance in executive rationale across five major economies – Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and the United States – and suggest that action and structures in these economies are broadly aligned with the respective expressions of executive rationale. We consequently hold that indigenous management research may benefit from a focus on executive rationale in particular, and we propose a concrete research agenda.

Sustainability

This study examines how corporations in the German food industry understand and perceive communication as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimension, how they communicate about food-related sustainability, and how this corporate food communication can lead to sustainability-oriented change in action-guiding institutions. This study takes a communicative-constructivist viewpoint that does not focus on the extent to which the communicated corresponds to the actual action but rather on how communication and communicatively constructed institutions can shape, influence, or constitute the action. A comparative qualitative case study approach reveals how two deviant cases within the producing and processing food industry assume responsibility through food communication and identifies five underlying roles of communication that, in their case-specific variations yield in two different conceptualizations of perceiving responsibility through communication. The analysis and interpretat...

International Journal of Management Reviews

How do people use humour to make sense of and constitute organizations? To understand this, I consider humour as a dynamic discursive practice, through which people (re)produce, complicate and potentially transform relations of power in the workplace. To extend the reach of humour research to this end, I have reviewed and synthesized the literature on humour to identify five contextual resources for agentic sensemaking in the use of humour through which discourses are destabilized and critiqued. I then consider six discursive practices, exercised through humour, that generate power and help constitute organizations. To complete my conceptual framework, I identify and discuss five potential avenues for future research on humour and power at work. I aim to inspire researchers to associate, use and analyse the processes in my framework to generate critically orientated evidence of how people use humour to substantiate organizational/workplace realities. I conclude that humour offers rich potential to better understand how people subjectively constitute organizations in practice.

Production and Operations Management, 2020

Humanitarian disasters are highly dynamic and uncertain. The shifting situation, volatility of information, and the emergence of decision processes and coordination structures require humanitarian organizations to continuously adapt their operations. In this paper, we aim to make headway in understanding adaptive decision-making in a dynamic interplay between changing situation, volatile information and emerging coordination structures. Starting from theories of sensemaking, coordination and decision-making, we present two case studies that represent the response to two different humanitarian disasters: Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and the Syria Crisis, one of the most prominent on-going conflicts. For both, we highlight how volatile information and the urge to respond via sensemaking lead to fragmentation and misalignment of emergent coordination structures and decisions, which, in turn, slow down adaptation. Based on the case studies, we derive propositions and the need to continuously align laterally between different regions and hierarchically between operational and strategic levels to avoid persistence of coordination-information bubbles. We discuss the implications of our findings for the development of This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved methods and theory to ensure that humanitarian operations management captures the critical role of information as a driver of emergent coordination and adaptive decisions.

Engineering, 2021

Meditari Accountancy Research

Purpose This paper aims to examine why the sustainability paradox exists and how it unfolds by focusing on intraorganizational dynamics. It explores how organizational actors perceive and make sense of sustainability and thereby contribute to the sustainability paradox. Design/methodology/approach In a case study on IREN, an Italian listed multi-utility with considerable engagements with sustainability, data collection through interviews, e-mails and document analysis revealed contradictions raised by directors and middle managers. Findings were analyzed by iterating with the literature used to frame this study, which combines organizational sensemaking, paradoxes and management control. Findings The sustainability paradox comprises various facets. Directors and middle managers interpret sustainability differently depending on their role within the organization and their perceptions of the concept itself. Different interpretations thus occur within and across organizational levels a...

2021

This study aims to understand the meaning created by Itau Unibanco’s internal actors in the Integrated Reporting (IR) processes. An interpretative approach based on Karl Weick’s sensemaking perspective is adopted. A case study methodology was adopted for undertaking the empirical work. The results show that IR identity in the institution is related to three issues: synergy processes between sectors; integration for the production of other reports; and development of an integrated thinking chain for the entire business. We present perceptions on benefits and difficulties in the process of preparing the integrated report. Although the practices and processes established did not change the characteristics of the bank, the perspective of the social actors seems to have changed from a sectoral view to a multidimensional view. In addition, the conclusions suggest that it is not difficult to understand that separating ‘thinking’ from ‘doing’, attributing to the individual the role of mere ...

Ageing and Society, 2021

Ageing Europeans are today healthier than previous generations and often manage to live independently up to a high age. The proportion of people 80 years of age and older has increased significantly, and with high age the risk of multi-illness and dementia increases. Strong urbanisation processes have changed the demographic structure in rural areas, and young women and men have migrated towards the urban areas to study and work, while older persons have remained behind. This demographic challenge of increasing numbers of persons older than 80 years with care needs living in remote rural areas has become a major European social problem. In tackling this dilemma, many European countries have high expectations for eHealth, digitalisation and welfare technology. In this comparative study of policy debates in Italy, Finland and Sweden, we analyse how – between 2009 and 2019 – the issues of eHealth have been articulated in national and regional policies of the three countries with deep d...

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2015

The research investigates the role of leadership in the transformation of denominational structures towards a missional ecclesiology, and focusses on the Highveld Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church. It describes the missional journey of the denomination, and interprets the transformation. The theory of ‘complex leadership’ in complex systems is applied to the investigation of the impact of leadership on a denominational structure. The theory identifies three mechanisms used by leaders as enablers in emergent, self-organisation systems: (1) Leaders disrupt existing patterns, (2) they encourage novelty, and (3) they act as sensemakers. These insights are applied as a tool to interpret the missional transformation of a denomination.

Contemporary Accounting Research, 2018

This field study examines the workings of multiple performance measurement systems (PMSs) used within and between a division and Headquarters (HQ) of a large European Corporation. We explore how multiple PMSs arose within the multinational corporation. We first provide a first order analysis which explains how managers make sense of the multiplicity and show how an organization's PMSs may be subject to competing processes for control that result in varied systems, all seemingly functioning, but with different rationales and effects. We then provide a second order analysis based on a sense-making perspective that highlights the importance of retrospective understandings of the organization's history and the importance of various legitimacy expectations to different parts of the multinational. Finally, we emphasize the role of social skill in sense-making that enables the persistence of multiple systems and the absence of overt tensions and conflict within organizations.

Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2020

Team design thinking in new product development (NPD) refers to a set of design-oriented principles that can be embedded in the everyday routines of NPD teams. We theorize that team design thinking enables NPD teams to develop more innovative products-products that are useful and novel-by reducing the routine and cognition-based inertia that constrains the team's innovativeness. Through a study of 247 NPD projects, we investigate the relationships between team design thinking, product utility, and product novelty. Further, we also explore whether the team's unfamiliarity with product contexts influences these relationships. Findings show that team design thinking is positively associated with useful products in both familiar and unfamiliar contexts, but that team design thinking is associated with product novelty only in familiar contexts. Findings also suggest that team design thinking can be framed as a dynamic capability that addresses routine and cognition-based inertia by expanding the organization's knowledge resource base, particularly, in familiar contexts. A key implication of this research is that team design thinking will influence product utility in a variety of situations, but its influence on product novelty will be evident primarily in familiar contexts. PRACTITIONER POINTS  NPD teams looking to create useful and novel products should embed the four core principles of design thinking outlined in this article (user empathy, collaborative abduction, iteration, collaborative representation) into their daily activities and interactions.  Design thinking practices help teams create useful products across a variety of situations.  Design thinking practices are helpful in creating novel products, but this is likely to be particularly evident when the team is already familiar with the problem.  Teams that are tasked with creating novel products in unfamiliar situations should consider incorporating techniques other than team design thinking.

Human Resource Management Journal, 2017

In this essay, we develop a new argument about how the concept of embeddedness and a sensemaking approach can be used to theorise small firms' regulatory responses, especially to employment regulation. We want to move beyond the simplistic and narrow conceptualisations of resistant action in small firms in response to regulation. We contribute to theorising on small firms' regulatory responses by developing an embedded account of social action that takes us beyond the dichotomy of individualised (micro) and institutional accounts (macro) explanations of firm behaviour. Our argument emphasises the situatedness of small firm behaviour shaped by, and in turn shaping, the contexts in which they are embedded. We go beyond stereotypes to give a nuanced account of situated action. In conclusion, we briefly outline how our ideas can be operationalised to explain small firms' diverse responses to regulation.

International Journal of Ethics Education, 2020

There is a need to explore educational strategies that translate ethics knowledge into ethical behavior. Commonly used pedagogical approaches steeped in traditional normative ethical theory are less powerful than sensemaking in preparing clinicians to respond to ethical problems in practice. This integrative review of 15 articles explores the use of sensemaking as an instructional method for clinical ethics. Whittemore and Knafl's (Journal of Advanced Nursing 52(5):546-553, 2005) integrative review method guided a systematic appraisal of data from both qualitative and quantitative research traditions, synthesizing disparate studies in analyzing literature about the use of sensemaking as a pedagogical approach in teaching ethics. Findings supported the use of Weick's sensemaking theory to develop instructional methods that encourage ethical decision making in students as well as promote ethical response by health care providers. The review reveals important theoretical and training implications for introducing sensemaking as a means to promote ethical action in clinical practice.

Sustainability Science, 2022

Transformation acquires its meaning within contexts and particular settings where transformative change is experienced, and where people engage in meaning-making. We used the forest–climate nexus in Sweden as an empirical case study, and the leverage-points perspective as an analytical lens. The aim was to investigate contextual leverage for transformative change, and how our use of context and relations shapes our understanding of transformation and leverage for change. The empirical basis was a whole-day workshop, held in both northern and southern Sweden, for local forest stakeholders. To detract from current conflict and barriers to change, we asked the stakeholders to reflect on transformative change in the past and in the future, and the spatio-temporal relations that form the forest–climate nexus. Our analysis suggests that leverage associated with a transformative change in the future is commonly seen as universal and detached from context, reflecting, for example, national ...

Cambridge Handbook of Open Strategy, 2019

Open Strategy, both as a set of processes and practices, and as an emerging academic field, "promises increased transparency and inclusion regarding strategic issues, engaging both internal and external stakeholders" (Hautz et al., 2017: 298; see also Whittington et al., 2011). Open contexts, by involving greater transparency and inclusiveness, strongly impact the way multiple stakeholders make sense of strategy or, in other words, negotiate, disseminate, or even contest the issues at play in strategic change. The diversity that openness brings to the strategic table-a diversity of people (inclusion) but also of information and of perspectives (transparency)-offers organizations more possibilities to help them to make sense of their complex environment (Seidl & Werle, 2018). To uphold the dual promise of inclusion and transparency, Open Strategy would therefore benefit from sensemaking research's attention to the detailed practices through which people form a shared understanding.

Educational Management Administration & Leadership

Changes to the structure of English education because of decentralisation policy, particularly since 2010, have resulted in the creation of large groupings of schools – multi-academy trusts, organisations with multi-level governance structures, set out in schemes of delegation. Although the government has demanded absolute clarity on the role and remit of each part of the structure and the relationship and reporting between them, recent research suggests that there is little clarity or consistency in the role and function of board structures, with members often confused about their roles. This study draws on data from a funded project to examine: What level of consistency there is in multi-academy trust schemes of delegation, and what evidence is there that schemes of delegation align with sensemaking models of board members? The article concludes with a discussion on what the findings imply for use of schemes of delegation as useful tools for board member sensemaking in multi-acade...

Frontiers in Psychology, 2022

This paper proposes an analytical framework for the analysis of organizational cognition that borrows from distributed and ecological cognition. In so doing, we take a case study featuring a decision on the topic of agreeing on a set point in the agenda of a meeting. It is through the analysis of a few minutes of video-recording used in the case that enables us to demonstrate the power of applying distributed and ecological cognition to organizing processes. Cognitive mechanism, resources, and processes are identified within this combined framework. Mechanisms are described as "socio-material" (CM1)-where "people" and "artifacts" are the related cognitive resources-and as "conceptual" (CM2)-with "group" identity, "topic" understanding, meaning of "procedures," and perception of "time" as resources. Processes are defined as "coupling," "de-coupling," and "un-coupled" depending on the type of relation in place. Finally, the paper presents an agent-based computational simulation to demonstrate the potentials of operationalizing this approach.

Journal of Communication Management, 2021

PurposeThe paper explores university leaders' employee-focused sensegiving discourse during the COVID-19 health crisis. The aim is to reveal how leadership sensegiving narratives construct emotion in the rhetor-audience relationship.Design/methodology/approachA social constructionist, sensemaking approach centres on the meaning-making discourse of university leaders. Using rhetorical discourse analysis (RDA), the study analysed 67 emails sent to staff during a three-month period at the start of the global pandemic. RDA helps to reveal how university leaders help employees make sense of changing realities.FindingsThree core narratives: organisational competence and resilience; empathy, reassurance and recognition; and community and location reveal a multi-layered understanding of leadership sensegiving discourse in which emotion intersects with material and temporal sensemaking dimensions. In supporting a process of organisational identification and belonging, these core narrativ...

Scandinavian Journal of Management, 2023

Despite previous efforts to deal with the ontological split between human subjects and reality, sensemaking has remained human-centered. We argue that human-centered sensemaking risks omitting constitutive elements of reality. To escape the ontological split, we decenter sensemaking and thus extend it in such a way that it allows seemingly unrelated and independent humans and nonhumans to become connected and interdependent with what is made sense of. Doing so allows us to demonstrate how a decentered understanding of reality can produce a radically different understanding of research phenomena. As a means to show the consequences of a decentered sensemaking, we revisit the Mann Gulch disaster and show that not all disasters can be avoided by better sensemaking or good management.

Risk Management, 2017

The current study examined crisis management and the signals that indicate its appearance. Based on cognitive and social psychology theories, we explored how senior and non-senior employees engage in sensemaking and sensegiving activities prior to and during crisis. Based on natural language processing, we analyzed a database of 86,643 emails sent by Enron employees before Enron declared bankruptcy and after the bankruptcy event. Our findings showed that employees could sense the impending crisis and applied informal scanning methods in an attempt at sensemaking of their unstable reality. In parallel, managers used sensegiving by deploying more positive confidence words in their emails. This tendency escalated after the crisis broke out. We explain this increase as the need to resolve feelings of cognitive dissonance related to their identity and reality. Our findings suggest both theoretical and practical contributions for the survival of organizations.

New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition, 2016

For organizational leaders, managing strategic change is a primary management activity (By, 2005). Reflecting its significance as a management function, there is now a substantial body of literature and many dynamic models and 'recipes' advising managers how to lead and implement strategic change. These models present an ordered macro approach to what, in reality, is a highly complex, recursive and messy process. In this chapter we eschew these neatly packaged change management processes and explore the micro level arguments of leaders as they grapple with the uncertainty of strategic change and seek to give primacy to their sense of the change and related issues. Based on the findings of our extensive micro level study, we present a theoretical model which explains the mechanisms that underpin this important activity.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2020

Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2020