Sensemaking (Organizational Behavior)

SENSEMAKING AND SOCIAL ACCOUNTS OF MIDDLE MANAGERS

by Danielle Tucker

Best Paper Proceedings, Academy of Management Annual Conference 2012

Using social accounts as cognitive tools for change, we examine middle managers during a large hospital facility move.... more Using social accounts as cognitive tools for change, we examine middle managers during a large hospital facility move. We elucidate how group consensus and the alignment of a social account with existing schemata mediates sensemaking. Our findings expand theory regarding how middle managers incorporate or reject new information.

BROADENING MANAGEMENT BANDWIDTH THROUGH ORGANIZATIONAL MINDFULNESS IN STRATEGY FORMATION PROCESSES.

by Alain Guiette

Presented at 2012 Western Academy of Management Conference, San diego, CA. March 2012.

Organizations face increasing availability of information at all managerial levels. This induces challenges to... more Organizations face increasing availability of information at all managerial levels. This induces challenges to efficiently and effectively use this information during scanning and sensemaking phases of strategy formation processes. This conceptual paper proposes how the emerging research on organizational mindfulness can broaden management bandwidth during organizational scanning and sensemaking. Organizational mindfulness broadens the strategy formation funnel at two stages. First, during scanning, organizational mindfulness focuses attention on weak cues, increases an organization’s field of vision, enhances sustained attention capabilities, and induces a shift from conceptual to perceptual noticing. Secondly, during sensemaking, organizational mindfulness stimulates direct experience, reduces bias caused by cognitive maps and alerts organizations derailing in active inertia through unlearning. These effects are primarily accomplished through mindful organizing processes of preoccupation with failure, sensitivity to operations and reluctance to simplify interpretations.

Unternehmenskultur. Wenn Management Sinn macht

by Ariane Berthoin Antal

in: Friedrich Loock (ed.), Kulturmanagement, Gabler Verlag: Wiesbaden, 1991:9-16.

The Anthropology of Empty Spaces

by Jerzy Kociatkiewicz

Co-authored with Monika Kostera
Published (1999) in 'Qualitative Sociology' 22/1: 37-50
DOI: 10.1023/A:1022131215755
This copy does not follow journal formatting or page numbers.

We would like to tell an anthropologic story about how we see reality and how we feel about it, with no intention to... more We would like to tell an anthropologic story about how we see reality and how we feel about it, with no intention to generalize our reflections. Our version of anthropology is intentionally self-reflexive and self-reflective. This text is a narrative study of the feelings of anthropologists out in the field. The anthropologic frame of mind is a certain openness of the mind of the researcher/observer of social reality (Czarniawska-Joerges 1992). On the one hand, it means the openness to new realities and meanings, and on the other, a constant need to problematize, a refusal to take anything for granted, to treat things as obvious and familiar. The researcher makes use of her or his curiosity, the ability to be surprised by what she or he observes, even if it is 'just' the everyday world. Our explorations concern an experience of space. It aims at investigating the space not belonging to anyone. While 'anthropologically' moving around different organizations, we suddenly realized that we were part of stories of the space we were moving in. Areas of poetic emptiness can be experienced, often in the physical sense, on the boundaries and inside of organizations.

Organizing Ambiguity: A Grounded Theory of Leadership and Sensemaking Within Dangerous Contexts

by Cliff Scott

Co-authored with Ben Baran, Organizational Science, UNC Charlotte.

Leaders in high-reliability organizational contexts such as firefighting, emergency medicine, and law enforcement... more Leaders in high-reliability organizational contexts such as firefighting, emergency medicine, and law enforcement often face the challenge of making sense of environments that are dangerous, highly ambiguous, and rapidly changing. Most leadership research, however, has focused on more stable conditions. This study analyzed 100 reports of “near-miss” situations in which firefighters narrowly escaped injury or
death, drawing upon sensemaking and high-reliability organizational theories to provide a grounded theory of leadership processes within extreme events. Themes related
to direction setting, knowledge, talk, role acting, role modeling, trust, situational awareness, and agility were key categories. Further abstraction of the data revealed the higher-order categories of framing, heedful interrelating, and adjusting
as key characteristics of the overall social process of leadership within dangerous contexts, labeled organizing ambiguity. These findings highlight leadership as a collective
sensemaking process in which ambiguity is reduced and resilience promoted in the face of danger via interaction among and between leaders and followers.

Paid time off as a vehicle for self‐definition and sensemaking

by Lucy Ford

Existential and phenomenological approaches to organizational sensemaking: Narrative and ethnography

by Andrew Herrmann

Paper presented at the Central States Communication Association Convention, Minneapolis, MN, 2007. (Top student paper Organizational and Professional Communication Interest Group.)

Researchers across disciplinary boundaries find Weick’s concept of sensemaking fundamentally important for... more Researchers across disciplinary boundaries find Weick’s concept of sensemaking fundamentally important for understanding both individual and organizational activity. Sensemaking is the process by which message equivocality is reduced temporally through the communicative accomplishment of the double-interact. Unfortunately the methods of investigation into sensemaking activity often represent these processes as static, rather than as fluid. I analyze sensemaking through the lens of existential phenomenology, a philosophical basis which recognizes the individual as embedded in everyday activity. As such, sensemaking needs to be examined methodologically through narrative and auto/ethnographic research, which improve existential understandings of individual and organizational processes temporally.

Interaction, External Representations and Sense Making

by David Kirsh

In N. A. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.), in Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1103-1108). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Why do people create extra representations to help them make sense of situations, diagrams, illustrations,... more Why do people create extra representations to help them make sense of situations, diagrams, illustrations, instructions and problems? The obvious explanation–external representations save internal memory and computation–is only part of the story. I discuss eight ways external representations enhance cognitive power: they provide a structure that can serve as a shareable object of thought; they create persistent referents; they change the cost structure of the inferential landscape; they facilitate re-representation; they are often a more natural representation of structure than mental representations; they facilitate the computation of more explicit encoding of information; they enable the construction of arbitrarily complex structure; and they lower the cost of controlling thought – they help coordinate thought.

The Volunteer Stages and Transitions Model: Organizational Socialization of Volunteers

by Debbie Haski-Leventhal

Antenarratives, Strategic Alliances, and Sensemaking: Engagement and Divorce without Marriage between Two Brazilian Air Carriers Firms

by Sergio Luis Seloti Jr

Edited by David M. Boje
co-authored with PhD Mário Aquino Alves

SENSEMAKING EM ALIANÇAS ESTRATÉGICAS

by Sergio Luis Seloti Jr

Practicism: the unifying body of understanding for everything

by Wilfred Berendsen

This paper gives a relatively brief explanation and discussion about my unifying body of understanding for everything, which i called practisism/practicism. This is a grand unifying narrative, which is different from a grand unifying theory being searched for in physics. My argument is that a grand unifying theory of everything can never be found. In fact Einstein and also now Stephen Hawking have been searching at wrong places for something that can not be reached. A grand unifying methodology for everything can be reached, but not a grand unifying theory for everything. The grand unifying methodology for everything is what i offer, also because it is based on the sole underlying structure and nature of our universes. And the important realization that also our sensemaking has to be based on and guided by this sole underlying structure and nature of all of our universes. I termed this SOLE underlying structure and nature of all of our universes holoplurality. The paper gives some links with physics, but in general my body of understanding for everything really has to become the ultimate fundament for ALL of sciences and sensemaking. While the relevance is more important for social sciences than the other sciences. Social sciences like economics, law studies, management, philosophy, psychology and sociology can be largely improved by input of and guidance by my body of understanding for everything.

Just download and read, it are only 3 pages :-) Just download and read, it are only 3 pages :-)

Sensemaking In Virtual Teams: The Impact Of Emotions And Support Tools On Team Mental Models And Team Performance

by Arik Cheshin

co-authored with Anat Rafaeli and Shy Ravid

Yue, A., and Mills, A.J. (2006) `Making Sense Out of Bad Faith: Sartre, Weick and Existential Sensemaking in Organizational Analysis.’ Proceedings of the XXIV International Colloquium of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism, Nijmegan, 12-15 July

by Albert J. Mills

Yue, A., & Mills, Albert J. (2008) `Making Sense out of Bad Faith: Sartre, Weick and Existential Sensemaking in Organizational Analysis.’ Tamara, 7:7.1, pp.66-80

by Albert J. Mills

Mills, A. J. (2008) “Getting Critical About Sensemaking.” In D. Barry and H. Hansen (Eds.) The Sage Handbook of New Approaches to Organization Studies, pp.29-30. London: Sage.

by Albert J. Mills

Sanderson, Kathy, Mills, Albert J., Helms Mills, Jean (2012) `Making Sense of Gender and Organizational Change: A Feminist Review of Selected Articles, pp.492-505,' in David Boje, Bernard Burnes and John Hassard [Eds.], Routledge Companion to Organizational Change, pp. 492-505, London: Routledge.

by Albert J. Mills

Helms Mills, J., & Mills, A.J. (2000) Sensemaking and the Gendering of Organizational Culture. Proceedings of the Women in Management Division of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, Annual Conference, pp. 12-21, edited by David Wicks, Montreal, July 8-11

by Albert J. Mills

Making Sense of Knowledge Management

by Philip Salem

Salem, P. J. (2007). Making sense of knowledge management. Vestnik. 5, 47-68.

‘Mandate expectations: How councillors make sense of and enact representation in an appointed arena.’

by Thom Oliver

The modern councillor now lives in an era of complex local governance operating in multiple arenas and networks rather... more The modern councillor now lives in an era of complex local governance operating in multiple arenas and networks rather than purely through old-style national/local government structures. Regional assemblies represent one such arena within which councillors operate. Formed on the basis of appointment, councillors are mandated to represent their local authority at the regional assembly.

This paper is formed from the results of a case study of councillors and their representative actions whilst operating in the West Midlands Regional Assembly. The case study explores the role choices of councillors as they strategically access the policy process at different stages and institutional levels in order to maximise their opportunities to forward particular representative concerns. 

This paper locates the analysis within the theoretical framework of sense making (Weick 1995) in order to understand how external factors, internal preferences, logics and ideals interplay within a particular context to define the enactment of representation. It therefore addresses the reflexivity of actors with regards to understanding and adapting to different policy contexts. The results appraise the differences between and within councillors interpretations of their role by exploring their micro-level enactments of representation as situated actors ‘making sense’ of their role and a new organisational context.