Critical Sensemaking Research Articles

Interweaving Creative Critical Sense-Making through a Body of Koloa

Storytelling through the arts is embedded in Pacific cultural ways and is meaningfully expressed by interweaving history, genealogy, cultural values, and beliefs. My investigation into Pasifika students’ success as Pasifika in visual arts was revealed through the students’ artworks and stories. Visual art teachers’ beliefs, attitudes and pedagogical practices were also examined to illuminate the critical role they play in affirming Pasifika student success as Pasifika. The inclusion of my own experiences and artworks as a visual artist of Tongan and German descent, grounds the research project and offers voice to my creative critical sense-making process. This article also presents an exploratory examination of falanoa, alongside Caroline Scott Fanamanu’s analysis, as an intergenerational arts-based research method, specifically in the context of my own body of koloa, a personal collection of treasured artworks generated across a 30-year period. Recognising my duality of distinct ancestral worlds, this article suggests that falanoa can be a valuable method for arts-based research, particularly in the context of creative critical sense-making, cultural preservation, and intergenerational knowledge.

Mind the gap! Building bridges between institutional work and critical sensemaking

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to address research gaps relating to agency and institutionalism in new institutional theory (NIT) and institutional work (IW) and use the critical sensemaking (CSM) approach to bridge the debates around agency, especially on issues of language and discourse, actor network theory (ANT) and history.Design/methodology/approachA conceptual analysis of the literature is performed to discuss issues of agency in IW and CSM in organizations, and examples of empirical studies are used to illustrate connectivity, contrast and fusion.FindingsThe analysis illustrates points of distance (rather than disconnect), but most importantly, connectivity and the potential for further developments between the literature on IW and CSM.Social implicationsDiscussion around new possibilities to focus on agency has the potential to contribute to humanist thinking about the (agentic) character of organizations and the potential for social change.Originality/valueThe article contributes to the discussion of agency in the organization through a starting point (i.e. CSM) outside of NIT.

Critical Sensemaking: A Framework for Interrogation, Reflection, and Coalition Building toward More Inclusive College Environments

Given the oppressive nature of higher education environments, educators must support students in making sense of their experiences—especially minoritized students. Although this kind of sensemaking often happens informally, college educators are primed to support students in understanding: (1) their experiences within and their interactions with higher education environments; (2) how those experiences and interactions reflect and are shaped by systemic issues; and (3) the implications of these experiences and interactions during college and beyond. Accordingly, we introduce critical sensemaking (CSM) as a pedagogical tool that educators can expose students to and create a more equitable college environment. CSM is a framework that encourages students to interrogate their collegiate environments and experiences, focusing on power and systems of oppression and how they interpret and negotiate their environments. Only by gaining this understanding can students press for institutional transformation in a manner that reflects various aspects of their experiences; hence, creating an institutional accountability structure. Moreover, educators supporting students’ acquisitions of CSM skills provides opportunities to build trust and meaningful coalitions toward creating more inclusive college environments.

Entwined Positionality and Interpretive Frames of Reference: An Autoethnographic Account

This paper investigates the ethnographic researcher's positionality and its role in sensemaking within the research process. Using autoethnographic data of the first author - a black female West African (Yoruba) scholar in a Western organizational context, we adopt a critical sensemaking approach to make sense of the researcher's field experience. We propose a conceptualization of the researcher's positionality as one that is entwined in the field, being an active interaction of the researcher's formative context with her sensory capabilities. We demonstrate how openness to the researcher's entwined positionality generates interpretive frames of reference and uncovers nuances in the sensemaking process, which widens the scope for reflexivity. We offer a methodological roadmap for engaging entwined positionality in reflexive practice and contribute to the body of research which challenges the idea of the detached researcher; thus, we respond to the growing calls for integrating the elements of a researcher's positionality into research in a way that enhances reflexivity.

‘We did everything we could’: how employees’ made sense of COVID-19 in the tourism and hospitality industry

ABSTRACT This study locates the COVID-19 pandemic in the realm of crisis management and by applying a novel paradox and sensemaking perspective, we illustrate how tourism organizations dealt with tensions between maintaining business as usual and preparing for the uncertain in the midst of an imminent winter season. We argue that it is not so much the novelty of the COVID-19 crisis per se but the paradoxes it created that should be considered if we are to understand how the crisis management of organizations unfolded in practice. We zoom in on the ad-hoc crisis management practices of small and medium-sized enterprises which have barely been analyzed through the lens of how they handled the pandemic and address this gap from the perspective of employees on the frontline. Using 22 interviews with regular and seasonal employees as a database, we show how employees perceived organizational attempts to manage the crisis and explore the interplay between organizational responses and employees’ individual sensemaking/sensegiving attempts for coping with a paradoxical situation. Our contribution emphasizes paradox recognition as a critical sensemaking outcome for navigating an extraordinary crisis situation. The implications highlight several measures for coping with crises and securing operations once they are over.

What’s Your Excuse? Sensemaking About Chronic Absenteeism in a Rural, Latinx High School

Nationwide, over seven million students are chronically absent from school each year, impacting academic success and future job earnings. Latinx high school students have among the highest absentee rates across all racial groups. Using critical sensemaking theory, this qualitative case study examines how school, district, and community leaders make sense of chronic absenteeism in their diversifying local high school. This study is situated in Hensonville Secondary School (a pseudonym), a small, rural high school in Iowa serving a predominantly Latinx student body. Findings reveal that persistent deficit narratives placed upon Latinx and/or low-income students drive the perception of absentee students as “others” that do not fit the expectations of the educational leaders or of the broader community. Power and privilege in the district were evident as white educational leaders blamed Latinx students and those from low-income backgrounds for chronic absenteeism while minimizing the institutional and contextual factors that may be contributing to low student attendance. Collaborative partnerships are increasingly being used to address chronic absenteeism, and we also investigate these efforts in Hensonville. white educational leaders in diversifying rural communities, and the leadership preparation programs educating these future leaders, must rely on culturally relevant/responsive strategies in order to best support their students and reduce chronic absenteeism.

Zebras showing their stripes: a critical sense-making study of women CSR leaders

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to reveal the gendered nature of social arrangements in order to bring to the surface the hidden discourses that mediate the opportunities of women leaders in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability.Design/methodology/approachThe author uses critical sense-making (CSM) to analyze interviews with CSR leaders toward understanding the interconnected layers of influences they draw from as they make sense of their experiences.FindingsDespite the positioning of women as being untapped resources within CSR, the reality within CSR leadership indicates that resilient, stereotypical social constructions of gender are being (re)created. However, cues can disrupt the ongoing process of sense-making and create shocks that represent opportunities for resistance as discriminatory practices are revealed.Research limitations/implicationsApplying CSM as a methodology and to the field of CSR adds a component to CSR and gender scholarship that is currently missing. CSM as a methodology bridges broader sociocultural discourses and the local site of sense-making, making visible the structures and processes that enable some narratives to become legitimized by the formative context and protect the status quo.Social implicationsIf these leaders are able to use their discursive power to establish an alternate, dominant narrative throughout their organizations – a culture of emotional empathy within CSR – alternate meanings about the nature and purpose of CSR may emerge while highlighting the need for change.Originality/valueApplying CSM as a methodology and to the field of CSR adds a component to CSR and gender scholarship that is currently missing. CSM as a methodology bridges broader sociocultural discourses and the local site of sense-making, making visible the structures and processes that enable some narratives to become legitimized by the formative context and protect the status quo.

The conflictual sense of commercialisation and academic entrepreneurship

This article draws attention to how scientists make sense of commercialisation activities at the university. Using the critical sensemaking lens (CSM), it illustrates how the juxtaposition of the dominant discourse of academic research and the emerging discourse of commercialisation in academic work (re)produces a tensioned and conflictual sense of commercialisation and academic entrepreneurship (AE). The article is based on empirical data gathered from a two-year study of scientists working on a project that included both research and commercialisation activities. The contribution of this article is twofold; it argues that commercialisation is not only about organising and funding, but also about power dynamics and it demonstrates how hybrid projects that aim to integrate research with commercialisation activities offer rich data for the researchers of AE.

Sensemaking in the Time of COVID‐19

Abstract When people encounter surprising or confusing events, they engage in sensemaking to answer the questions, ?what?s the story?? and ?now what?? (Weick et al , 2005) Sensemaking is a socially constructed process in which individuals interact with their environment and with others to create meaning and enable action The COVID-19 pandemic has created an environment that is dynamically uncertain ? routines are upended, normal interactions are disrupted, and risk must be reassessed on an ongoing basis

Power relations in the production of historical context in disaster inquiry reporting

PurposeThis study aims to examine the textual performance of the Ocean Ranger Disaster inquiry, thus responding to recent calls to “practice context” in historical writing. This study goes beyond the epistemological assumptions about the grounds for knowing about the past as the authors explore how history is produced in the context of power relations.Design/methodology/approachThis paper imagines history-making as a storytelling performance. The authors combine critical historiography and critical sensemaking because these qualitative perspectives help us to understand the composition of the Ocean Ranger Royal Commission Report.FindingsThis case study makes a contribution within the genre of disaster inquiry reporting. The study explains how a formal historical record (the public inquiry report) may be created and how the report is related to aspects of power embedded in a writer’s sense of reality.Social implicationsThe Ocean Ranger Disaster continues to be of tremendous importance to the people of Newfoundland, Canada. There have been numerous studies of the disaster, but these have been overwhelmingly focused on technical matters. To authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to consider the inquiry from an historical context perspective.Originality/valueThe study site enables reflection on a question not often asked in the management history literature: How can we critically understand the composition of an official disaster inquiry report in the context of its power relations?

Emotion as soft power in organisations

PurposeAdopting the critical sensemaking (CSM) lens to the micro-level interaction between leader and employees, the article offers a theoretically informed example of leading with soft power and positive emotions that blurs boundaries in democratic organisations.Design/methodology/approachThe research methodology involves videography and interpretive analysis of video-recorded interactions that combines focused ethnography with video analysis. The analysis focuses on face-to-face meeting interactions between a leader and employees in a small service firm.FindingsThe findings illustrate how restoring the sense of the democratic organisation is an accumulating and complex phenomenon where explicit and implicit organisational rules and changing identity positions are enacted by constructing affective loyalties, moral and reflex emotions that serve as soft power capacities helping the leader and employees to enact meanings attached to a democratic rather than hierarchical organisation.Practical implicationsThe article provides new insight for human resources practitioners and leaders who want to build resilient organisations and pay attention to shared, distributed and relational leadership practices, co-creative work and collective decision-making processes.Originality/valueThe power explored in previous sensemaking studies has been power over, which is most often associated with the negative aspects of power, such as domination and suppression, in the pursuit of specific performance. The applications of videography method linking ethnography and interpretive analysis of video-recorded interactions are still rare in organisation studies.

From Learning Capacitance to Making Capacitors: the Missing Critical Sensemaking

Motivated by often passingly brief textbook discussions of industrial capacitors, this study examines how students make sense of textbook descriptions to create an industrial rolled-up capacitor. A total of 37 junior-year students at a top high school in Beijing, China, participated in the study. The participants followed their textbook guidance and used the parallel-plate structure as a prototype to make a rolled-up capacitor. To better understand their reasoning, we randomly selected 6 students for interviews: 2 from each of the higher-, middle-, and lower-achieving groups according to their course grades. Each interviewee was asked to recreate a capacitor, draw electric field lines for the (charged) capacitor, and compare its capacitance to that of a parallel-plate structure. Student work showed that the participants took textbook descriptions at face value without considering critical issues such as short circuit. Students’ reasoning of electric field and capacitance revealed that they confused electric field with magnetic field and held classic, nonnormative ideas that liken capacitance to the volume of a body. These results notwithstanding, two middle- and lower-achieving students attempted to make of the rolled-up capacitor and demonstrated a design mindset in their reasoning. Ironically, those traditionally considered as higher-achieving students showed no advantage in this task.

The Outsourcing of Online Dating: Investigating the Lived Experiences of Online Dating Assistants Working in the Contemporary Gig Economy

A small cottage industry emerging within the larger gig economy is online dating assistant (ODA) companies that allow paying clients to outsource the labor associated with online dating, including profile development, date selection and matching, and even interaction (i.e., ODAs assume their clients’ identities to exchange messages with other [unsuspecting] daters to secure face-to-face dates). The newness of this industry presents an opportunity to investigate the lived experience of remote employees working in an up-and-coming virtual organization. Through interviews with six ODAs, we explored motivations, day-to-day workflow, and development of work identities. Analysis uncovered unique challenges ODAs faced when performing the “human-based” tasks of online dating, which differed starkly from other popular services being bought and sold in the gig economy (e.g., rideshare, food delivery). Findings also show how ODAs engage in pragmatic and critical sensemaking as they navigate the specific challenges associated with ODA labor, and those created by remote work and gig labor, more generally.

Strategic change and sensemaking practice: enabling the role of the middle manager

PurposeThe critical input of middle managers as they make sense of the organisation's plans is paramount during the process of strategic change. Through the lens of middle manager sensemaking literature, this explorative research identifies key organisational practices that underpin sensemaking. An understanding of these practices will allow organisations better develop and support them, thereby enabling middle managers' contribution to strategic change.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed an innovative diary methodology. 42 middle managers, across three organisations, completed a weekly, online diary for 12 weeks. A qualitative analysis of the final 355 diaries isolated and explained the sensemaking practices in which middle managers engaged as they sought to achieve the shared understanding required to progress strategic change.FindingsThis study identifies the key practice underpinning middle manager sensemaking as formal and frequent discourse opportunities between leaders and middle managers. Through leader participation beyond the initiation stages of strategic change, and the organisation's positive positioning of time and metrics, these discourse opportunities enable a form of sensemaking associated with a number of positive organisational outcomes. These include middle manager sensegiving across the organisation, the successful enactment of strategic change, positive perceptions of change outcomes and organisational climate among middle managers and middle manager well-being.Research limitations/implicationsThis study advances our theoretical understanding of the practice of sensemaking in organisations through the isolation and identification of its key practices. However, given the difficulty in obtaining access for such a lengthy and intrusive methodology, the study is confined to three organisations. Additionally, the focus on the practice of sensemaking did not fully explore any contextual factors within these organisations. Also, middle manager perceptions of successful organisational outcomes are not very reliable performance indicators. While the self-reporting of perceptions is a worthwhile means of gathering data, a measure and comparison of actual business performance indicators would significantly strengthen the findings.Practical implicationsFrom a practitioner perspective, this study not only underlines the importance for organisations of developing critical sensemaking practices for middle managers but also provides a clear pathway to achieving this. In approaching the intangible process of sensemaking from a practice perspective, it provides key stakeholders such as leaders, change agents and the HR department with a guide as to the types and forms of discourse practices which can be enabled. Maybe more importantly, it also highlights the practices which disable middle manager sensemaking. The study also provides organisations with insights into the positive outcomes stemming from middle manager sensemaking that should strengthen their case towards the development of sensemaking practices.Originality/valueThis paper responds to the call for new approaches to the study of sensemaking as an ongoing practice within organisations. The qualitative diary analysis provides rich insights into the specific organisational practices that can enable middle manager sensemaking, while also highlighting those practices that can disable their role during strategic change. These findings provide organisations with clear approaches for developing sensemaking as a practice, thereby engaging and supporting the multiple actors and levels required to deliver successful strategic change.

Science teachers' sensemaking of the use of epistemic tools to scaffold students' knowledge (re)construction in classrooms

AbstractThis study explores the process of teacher scaffolding student engagement in epistemic tools from the critical sensemaking perspective. Epistemic tools are contextual artifacts manipulated to investigate and evaluate ideas to construct knowledge within the constraints of a disciplines' representational means. The main sources of our data are ~50 min‐long semistructured, responsive interviews with the 14 secondary school science teachers who participated in our professional learning environment (PLE) and implemented the activities from the PLE in their classrooms. We utilized the tools of discourse analysis to explore teacher sensemaking while they learned to teach science with epistemic tools. We then looked at intertextualities of meaning across multiple sets of data such as students' artifacts, pre/postsurveys, audio and video recordings of the workshops, and teachers' written implementation feedback forms. As a result, we recognized a pattern across different classrooms. Teachers would begin with a contextualized goal, and use a pedagogical strategy to scaffold their students as they worked to achieve that goal. Then, all teachers reported they faced some sort of ambiguity (such as grappling with failure, different levels of students). When faced with an ambiguity, teachers would then revise either their contextualized goal or their initial pedagogical strategy to help their students to reach their goals. Finally, we utilized constant‐comparative analysis to identify themes for teachers' contextualized goals. Four major themes emerged, including communicating connections to core ideas of science, making sense of how science works, assessing students' learning process outcomes, and fostering students' epistemic agency. The findings of the study have implications for future research and professional development activities on the use of epistemic practices and tools in classrooms with unique contextual characteristics.

Show it with feeling: performed emotions in critical sensemaking

This article draws attention to emotion in sensemaking within small entrepreneurial organisations. More specifically, it illustrates how performed emotion is related to enactment of a formative context, sensemaking and agency. The article also enriches the critical sensemaking heuristic by exploring a conversation between a leader and employees concerning adoption of a new online service. The analysis is based on videotaped data gathered from a two-year study of a franchise-based rental and real estate company. The contributions of the article are two-fold: 1) it argues that performed emotions are important because they may have an influence on the sensemaking of others and the possibility of exercising agency; 2) it demonstrates that videotaped material is a fertile source of data for studies on critical sensemaking in small entrepreneurial organisations.

Show it with feeling: performed emotions in critical sensemaking

Show it with feeling: performed emotions in critical sensemaking

Critical sensemaking: challenges and promises

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze current literature on critical sensemaking (CSM) to assess its significance and potential for understanding the role of agency in management and organizational studies.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis involves an examination of a selection of 51 applied studies that cite, draw on and contribute to CSM, to assess the challenges and potential of utilizing CSM.FindingsThe paper reveals the range of organizational issues that this work has been grappling with; the unique insights that CSM has revealed in the study of management and organizations; and some of the challenges and promises of CSM for studying agency in context. This sets up discussion of organizational issues and insights provided by CSM to reveal its potential in dealing with issues of agency in organizations. The sheer scope of CSM studies indicates that it has relevance for a range of management researchers, including those interested in behavior at work, theories of organization, leadership and crisis management, diversity management, emotion, ethics and justice, and many more.Research limitations/implicationsThe main focus is restricted to providing a working knowledge of CSM rather than other approaches to agency.Practical implicationsThe paper outlines the challenges and potential for applying the CSM theory.Social implicationsThe paper reveals the range of problem-solving issues that CSM studies have been applied to.Originality/valueThis is the first major review of the challenges and potential of applying CSM; concluding with a discussion of its strengths and limitations and providing a summary of insights for future work.

We do get terribly enthusiastic about everything! Performing emotion rules through parody

This paper adopts a performational approach to critical sensemaking to explore how organisational members enact innovation-related emotion rules through the performance of parody. The approach was motivated more by induction than deduction. During an action-research study in a small service company, humour, teasing, and laughter occurred in a workshop organised for the company. On close examination of the videotaped workshop data, it was noticed that parodic performances were used to make critical sense of the innovation-related emotion rules and power relationships within the company. Analysis of this study shows in detail how, through parodic and imitative performances, the leader and employees constructed three emotion rules - show your emotions, show your enthusiasm, and show your criticism in a nice way - that are set by the leader to promote innovation practice within the company.

The “silent killers” of a STEM-professional woman’s career

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to provide a plausible answer to how there are so few science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-professional women managers in the Canadian space industry.Design/methodology/approachThe author showcased one such individual and her experiences of the exclusionary order in this industry, by focusing on her discourses and those of her former supervisor. The author applied the critical sensemaking (CSM) framework to unstructured interview data and to various collected written documentation. To guide the author’s application of this CSM framework, the author asked and answered the following questions: what is the range of identity anchor points associated with, and available to, a STEM-professional woman within the Canadian space industry? What is the relationship between these anchor points and organizational rules and social values? And, how do these anchor points and their relationship with rules and social values influence the exclusion of STEM-professional women from management positions within this industry?FindingsThe author surfaced a STEM-professional woman’s range of ephemeral identities, captured within her range of attributed anchor points. The author also revealed some of the rules and social values of the organizational context she worked in. The author then analyzed the how of her exclusionary social order, by studying the relationship between these anchor points and these rules and social values.Social implicationsIn addition to addressing the lack of STEM-professional women in management and to filling a gap in the literature, this study made a contribution to our understanding of social-identities, represented by anchor points, and to their discursive reproduction within organizational contexts. The author also suggested micro-political resistances to undo this social order for one particular individual.Originality/valueThis study’s value can be measured by its contribution to the postpositivist cisgender and diversity literature focused on intersectionality scholarship, specifically in the area of identity anchor points and their (re)creation within social interactions.