Dynamics Of Sensemaking Research Articles

Depiction as possible phase in the dynamics of sociomorphing.

The depiction model presents a major advance in our theoretical conceptualization of how humans experience and understand social robots. But the scope of the model is, I suggest, more limited: It pertains to one possible phase in a more comprehensive cognitive-practical dynamics of sense-making ("sociomorphing") as conceptualized in the OASIS framework. According to the OASIS framework, some basic social actions can be realized by robots, while others may be depicted in the way described by the model.

The Early Global Vocation of Rome. Worship, Culture and Beyond

In all likelihood, Rome was the first global city, holding such primacy for around two thousand years since the time when the Empire built strong integration and interdependence relationships with the whole oecumene. Against the backdrop of long-term beliefs powered by the Papacy, this paper highlights the main features of the global Rome as the very core of Christianity and, after several disruptive events from the Early Renaissance onwards, as a main destination of the Grand Tour. Making use of primary and secondary literature sources as well as of a substantial iconography, the paper investigates the interplay between power strategies and urban morphology—permanence/change—through two main lenses: (i) the ‘inertia’ over time of the radiocentric pattern of the Forma Urbis citywide, according to the old saying all roads lead to Rome; and, (ii) the relentless reuse processes over built-up areas and sense-making dynamics coupling tangible and intangible assets. Accordingly, the Città Antica and the Città Moderna would be intertwined in residents’ and visitors’ everyday experiences until the Age of Enlightenment, when a new sense of history was to require protection measures setting antiquities apart from city life. However, this is another story.

Temporal distancing and integrating: Exploring coopetition tensions through managerial sensemaking dynamics

Despite the growing interest in coopetition management strategies, we still lack detailed insights into how the simultaneity of cooperation and competition is cognitively experienced and coped with at the individual level. Based on two case studies, we introduce sensemaking dynamics deeper into the cognitive management approaches of coopetition tensions by demonstrating temporal distancing and integrating as cognitive activities. Temporal distancing captures the perceived difficulties to connect recalled competitive pasts and imagined cooperative futures, whereas referencing re-imagined pasts and futures enables a connection, i.e. temporal integration, informing managerial actions and coopetition decision-making. First, our study extends theoretical insights on how tensions manifest through managerial sensemaking. Second, we contribute to research on individual level coping strategies part of the coopetition capability concept by showing that managerial mindsets encompass continuous re-imaginations of cooperative and competitive pasts, presents and futures. Third, the findings of our study suggest that managers cope with experienced tensions through their capability to not only re-imagine distant competitive and cooperative pasts and futures, but also through enacting these in the present.

Why Do Some Strategic Ideas Take Off? Affective Dynamics as Key Elements of Strategic Sensemaking

This paper adopts a sensemaking perspective to develop an understanding of how strategic ideas take off during strategic change. In particular, we focus on the crucial but underexplored role of affective dynamics in strategic sensemaking. Based on an ethnographic analysis of strategic change in a broadcasting company, we identify three types of sensemaking dynamics: progressive, regressive and ambivalent sensemaking. We then elaborate on three ways in which this sensemaking may be steered by sensegiving: framing, emotional manipulation, and emotional containment. We show how micro-level affective dynamics in strategic sensemaking is related to the takeoff of strategic ideas. Our analysis also adds to a better understanding of strategic agency in and through strategy meetings by elucidating the forms of sensegiving that can steer strategic sensemaking.

Senseshaping: The dynamics of sensemaking and sensegiving in high velocity product innovation

Managers and other professionals operating in high velocity environments engage in frequent, simultaneous, iterative and interleaved acts of sensemaking and sensegiving within a network of stakeholders as they confront a stream of potentially significant signals or events. How is collective meaning and action shaped as a result of such interactions? To understand the dynamics of meaning-making in high velocity settings, we conducted a grounded theory analysis of concurrent sensemaking and sensegiving during 83 product innovation projects in the information technology sector as reported by 26 product managers. The innovation projects involved both hardware and software products, and included developing wholly new products as well as modifying existing products in response to a triggering event or signal. We found that dynamic feedback between concurrent sensemaking and sensegiving results in senseshaping – the iterative synthesis and reconstruction of product meaning that satisfices across stakeholders. The presence of feedback and reflexivity implied in senseshaping makes it a new and more complex phenomenon than sensemaking and sensegiving separately. The empirically-grounded findings provide a systemic and parsimonious view of senseshaping – the micro-practices that comprise it, the contingencies that affect it, and the tactics that improve it.

The Dynamics of Sensemaking and Information Seeking in a Crisis Situation

Abstract The present article investigates two questions: What determines citizens’ use of different media to seek information in a crisis situation, and what influences their evaluation of the information found. The case analysed is a major fire at a chemical storage facility in the harbour of Halmstad in Sweden, where there was a risk of toxic fumes reaching the city and its approximately 60,000 inhabitants. The study is part of a larger project, financed by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, and in this part, focus group interviews are analysed. The results point to an interaction between citizens’ perception of the world, the perceived information, and the development of how the situation is regarded, where sensemaking is the pivotal concept.

Theory of Mind: Overcoming the Dichotomy Between Culture and Nature

Theory of Mind: Overcoming the Dichotomy Between Culture and Nature

Making sense of expatriation

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine how international workers engage into and make sense of expatriation and how sense-making enacts further action. Design/methodology/approach – Given the corporate influence over expatriation, empirical data were collected from a single case study organization, a well-established Portuguese retail company. The primary data sources were the in-depth interviews with 13 international workers, while other secondary data sources included company documents that provided the background information required to understand the interviewees and describe the organization. The experiences of expatriation through the accounts and stories of these workers were subject to thematic content analysis. Findings – The findings demonstrate that international workers act as sense-makers and sense-givers vehicles about expatriation. By doing so, they enact a plausible and dominant story that ultimately bounds the perception of divergent cues and limit their own action. While this ongoing dialogue between expatriation meaning and action can raise organizational actors’ capacities to negotiate and influence further meaning and action, it also validates existing practices and generates further compliance. Originality/value – Despite being limited to a single organizational context, this study offers a contextualized approach to the study of expatriation that complements earlier research and highlights sense-making dynamics and related outcomes, further extending the applications of the sense-making perspective. This study suggests new research avenues exploring the politics and negotiation bonds from which expatriation sense-making can emerge as well as the opportunities for disruptive sense-making.

Sensemaking: a driving force behind the integration of professional practices

There has been considerable effort in recent years to link and integrate professional services more closely for patients with comorbidities. However, difficulties persist, especially at the clinical level. This study aims to shed light on these difficulties by examining the process of sensemaking in professionals directly involved in this integration. The authors conducted an eight-year longitudinal case study of an organization specializing in mental health and substance abuse. Different data collection methods were used, including 34 interviews conducted between 2003 and 2009, observations and document analysis. The authors performed a qualitative analysis of the data using a processual perspective. This paper provides empirical insights about the nature of the sensemaking process in which professionals collectively participate and the effects of this process on the evolution of integrated services. It suggests that the development of integrated practices results from an evolutional and collective process of constructing meanings that is rooted in the work activities of the professionals involved. By drawing attention to the capacity of professionals to shape the projects they are implementing, this study questions the capacity of managers to actually manage such a process. In order to obtain the expected benefits of integration projects, such emergent dynamics must first be recognized and then supported. Only then can thought be given to mastering them. The fact that this is a single case study is not a limitation per se, although it does raise the issue of the transferability of results. Replicating the study in other contexts would verify the applicability of the authors' conclusions. This study offers a fresh perspective on the difficulties generally encountered at the clinical level when trying to integrate services. It makes a significant contribution to work on the dynamics of sensemaking in organizational life.

The temporal dynamics of sensemaking: A hindsight–foresight analysis of public commission reporting into the past and future of the “new terrorism”

The aim of this article is to extend sensemaking theory in public commission reporting by drawing attention to, and demonstrating differences in the temporal dynamics between past and future, hindsight and foresight within the sensemaking/sensegiving processes of two public commission reports. They are The Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States and The United States Commission into 21st Century Terrorism and National Security Report. Stemming from our analysis of how these commissions make sense of the risk posed by terrorism to national security, we seek to make three contributions. First, we develop sensemaking/sensegiving concepts in public commission reporting by theorizing about hindsight–foresight temporal dynamics. In particular, we extend existing sensemaking scholarship on public commission reporting by directing attention towards the important, yet under-scrutinized role that these inquiries have in sensemaking about the future. Second, we extend the presuppositions underpinning sensemaking theory by operationalizing concepts of antenarrative and employing them in our comparative analysis of the two reports. Third, we contribute to practice by illustrating empirically some of the ‘tactics’ that can be used for challenging hindsight about the known past for the purpose of improving foresight about an unknown future.

Dynamics of subjective change in psychotherapy. A Comment on the Paper "Dynamics of sense-making and development of the narrative in the clinical exchange" by Alessandro Gennaro, Miguel Gonçalves, Inês Mendes, António Ribeiro, & Sergio Salvatore

The following comment has been divided into four sections that present a critical discussion on: (1) the theoretical background of the paper; (2) the two methods used: Discourse Flow Analysis (DFA) and Innovative Moments Coding System (IMCS); (3) results; and (4) conclusions.

Dynamic Mapping of the Structures of Content in Clinical Settings (DMSC). A new coding system for analysing the patient's narratives

The paper presents a method of content analysis framed within a semiotic and contextual model of the psychotherapy process as a situated dynamics of sensemaking: the Dynamic Mapping of the Structures of Content in Clinical Settings (DMSC). DMSC is a system of content analysis focused on a generalized level of meaning, concerning basic aspects of the patient's narrative (e.g., if the narrative concerns herself or other than herself). The paper presents the result of the application of DMSC to an intensive single-case analysis (Katja). The method has been applied by judges to the transcripts of sessions and is aimed at identifying patterns of combinations (defined: Patterns of content) of the categories characterizing the patient's narratives (pattern analysis approach) as well as at mapping the transition among these patterns (sequential analysis approach). These results provide evidence of its construct validity. In accordance with the theoretical model grounding the method, we have found that: (a) DMSC provides a meaningful representation of the patient's narratives in terms of Patterns of content; (b) the probability of transition among the Patterns of content have proved to be significantly associated with the clinical quality of the sessions. The DMSC has to be considered an attempt paving the way for further investigations aimed at developing a deeper understanding of the role played by the dynamics of sensemaking in the psychotherapy process.

Dynamics of sense-making and development of the narrative in the clinical exchange

The present work is aimed at exploring the relationship between the dynamics of sense-making carried out by the clinical exchange and the content of the patient’s narrative. To this end the relationship between the formal and functional mapping of a psychotherapy carried out by the Discourse Flow Analysis (DFA) and the analysis of the patient’s narrative provided by the Innovative Moment Coding System (IMCS) have been compared. The comparison concerns a 15-session good outcome Emotion-Focused Therapy (Lisa's case). Findings highlight the association between the formal and functional characteristics of the clinical dialogue and the content of the narrative. More in particular, an association between the U-shape trajectory of the super-ordered meaning depicted by DFA and the evolution of the innovative content of the narrative enucleated by the IMCS were found.

The Dynamics of Sensemaking, Knowledge, and Expertise in Collaborative, Boundary-Spanning Design

This ethnographic study investigates how a project group deals with the contradiction between distributed knowledge in boundary-spanning collaborative processes and the expectation that software systems will provide unified, codified knowledge. Group and individual activities were observed over a period of 18 months, to examine the ways knowledge was presented, recognized, shared, or otherwise managed during joint design of business process and IT systems change. The study explores how knowledge and expertise were translated across organizational boundaries, and identifies four stages in the development of group understanding of how to manage sensemaking and expertise across knowledge boundaries: focus on defining shared goals; acknowledging and sharing tacit knowledge about organizational practice; identifying external influences; and explicit knowledge generation.

Cause Maps, Sensemaking, and Planned Organizational Change

This study represents a first attempt to employ cognitive cause-mapping techniques to explore individual sensemaking during a planned organizational change. The authors evaluated the contribution of this method as a vehicle for exploring sensemaking processes during a change effort. Study data revealed that cause mapping generates a rich source of information, demonstrates a high degree of content validity, and is a particularly useful technique for capturing the dynamics of sensemaking. The study also provided needed longitudinal and structural analyses of cause maps. Results showed significant differences in cause map content over time without corresponding differences in cause map structure. An integrated model of sensemaking during organizational change is offered.

Organizational Silence: A Barrier to Change and Development in a Pluralistic World

We argue that there are powerful forces in many organizations that cause widespread withholding of information about potential problems or issues by employees. We refer to this collective-level phenomenon as “organizational silence.” In our model we identify contextual variables that create conditions conducive to silence and explore the collective sensemaking dynamics that can create the shared perception that speaking up is unwise. We also discuss some of the negative consequences of systemic silence, especially for organizations' ability to change and develop in the context of pluralism.

Symbolism and Strategic Change in Academia: The Dynamics of Sensemaking and Influence

This study investigated the uses of sensemaking, influence, and symbolism in launching a strategic change effort at a university. It employed an ethnographic/interpretive approach in examining the ways that symbols, metaphors, and various subtle influence processes were used to lend meaning to concepts and possible courses of action by a task force instrumental to the strategic change process. Two distinct researcher perspectives were used: an “insider” perspective employing several informants along with an active participant-observer and an “outsider” perspective employing several researchers. Both perspectives were brought to bear as a means of countering the “researcher arrogance” that typifies organizational study by lending balanced voice to both insider and outsider interpretations of events. The findings showed that sensemaking and influence emerged as fundamental processes in the instigation of strategic change. Both processes were symbolically based and varied in directionality over the life of the task force (internally directed in the embryonic phases, and externally directed in the mature phases). Contrary to common wisdom, sensemaking and influence emerged as frequently coincident, interdependent processes that were difficult to distinguish from each other. The discovery of the common symbolic base for scnsemaking and influence also indicated that symbols served both expressive and instrumental roles: suggesting that the accepted view of symbols as predominantly expressive devices does not present a complete picture of their dynamic nature. The use of symbolism also was shown simultaneously to reveal and conceal different aspects of the change process, thus providing task force members the means to circumvent resistance while accomplishing desired action. Symbols and metaphors thus facilitated both cognitive understanding and intended action in attempting to “reinstitutionalize” a major public university via the strategic change process. Overall, the study suggests that efforts to stabilize an organizational system in flux from the systematic upheaval represented by strategic change can be understood as the symbolic interplay between sensemaking and influence.