Group Sensemaking Research Articles

Meeting Bridges: Designing Information Artifacts that Bridge from Synchronous Meetings to Asynchronous Collaboration

A recent surge in remote meetings has led to complaints of Zoom fatigue" and collaboration overload," negatively impacting worker productivity and well-being. One way to alleviate the burden of meetings is to de-emphasize their synchronous participation by shifting work to and enabling sensemaking during post-meeting asynchronous activities. Towards this goal, we propose the design concept of meeting bridges, or information artifacts that can encapsulate meeting information towards bridging to and facilitating post-meeting activities. Through 13 interviews and a survey of 198 information workers, we learn how people use online meeting information after meetings are over, finding five main uses: as an archive, as task reminders, to onboard or support inclusion, for group sensemaking, and as a launching point for follow-on collaboration. However, we also find that current common meeting artifacts, such as notes and recordings, present challenges in serving as meeting bridges. After conducting co-design sessions with 16 participants, we distill key principles for the design of meeting bridges to optimally support asynchronous collaboration goals. Overall, our findings point to the opportunity of designing information artifacts that not only support users to access but also continue to transform and engage in meeting information post-meeting.

Group trust dynamics during a risky driving experience in a Tesla Model X.

The growing concern about the risk and safety of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has made it vital to understand driver trust and behavior when operating AVs. While research has uncovered human factors and design issues based on individual driver performance, there remains a lack of insight into how trust in automation evolves in groups of people who face risk and uncertainty while traveling in AVs. To this end, we conducted a naturalistic experiment with groups of participants who were encouraged to engage in conversation while riding a Tesla Model X on campus roads. Our methodology was uniquely suited to uncover these issues through naturalistic interaction by groups in the face of a risky driving context. Conversations were analyzed, revealing several themes pertaining to trust in automation: (1) collective risk perception, (2) experimenting with automation, (3) group sense-making, (4) human-automation interaction issues, and (5) benefits of automation. Our findings highlight the untested and experimental nature of AVs and confirm serious concerns about the safety and readiness of this technology for on-road use. The process of determining appropriate trust and reliance in AVs will therefore be essential for drivers and passengers to ensure the safe use of this experimental and continuously changing technology. Revealing insights into social group-vehicle interaction, our results speak to the potential dangers and ethical challenges with AVs as well as provide theoretical insights on group trust processes with advanced technology.

Regulating liminality: Making sense of the vegetative state and defining the limits of end-of-life action.

Persistently alive but unaware, vegetative state patients are stuck in the transition between life and death - that is, in a liminal hotspot. This condition raises complex ethical and legal dilemmas concerning end-of-life action. Drawing on social representations (SRs) and the liminality framework, our research investigated how the vegetative state was constructed within the Italian parliamentary debates discussing end-of-life bills (2009-2017). We aimed to understand (1) how political groups represented the vegetative state, (2) how they legitimised different end-of-life bills and (3) came to terms with the issue of liminal hotspots. By dialogically analysing three debates (No. of interventions = 98), we identified six themes and discursive aims allowing parliamentarians to differently represent the vegetative state and support different courses of action. In turn, we identified new features of the psycho-social processes generating SRs: the dialogical tensions between anchoring and de-anchoring. Results corroborated the idea that de-paradoxifying liminality relies on group sense-making and, thus, different political leanings differently addressed the liminality of the vegetative state. We also reveal a novel feature of dealing with liminal hotspots informing the psycho-social literature that applies when a decision needs to be taken, such as in the case of crafting a law: moving from the paradox.

The modern military leader as sensemaker on the battlefield

The study on which this article reports, addressed the problem with which modern military leaders on the battlefield are faced in assisting the soldier at basic level to make sense of what is happening. In this study, the term ‘sensemaker’ implied a process of individual and group sensemaking that forms the basis for meaning-making in the volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world within which soldiers are functioning. The authors postulate a best-fit world view for military leaders in this military leadership sensemaking and meaning-making nexus. They coined ‘social constructivism in complexity’ where the military leader acts as a guide for soldiers through a sensemaking process. This process is graphically represented, and requires a toolkit to assist military leaders in working as sensemakers on the battlefield. The article concludes with recommendations to military psychologists and military educators who have to make policy changes to develop and implement such a toolkit for sensemaking on the battlefield.

When blogging is a challenge: An organizational and psychological analysis of a failed empowerment project

Literature supports the effectiveness of blogs to improve communication, strategic thinking, and collaboration. These competencies are particularly relevant for organizations, and for this reason, social media are frequently used as opportunities to better manage employees' behaviors, enhance the transfer of knowledge, and foster creativity. Despite these considerations, few research-based findings guide these new tools' practical application in the organizational environment's training processes. This study aims to understand the organizational, individual, and socio-relational processes and issues that occur during a blog-based training program and how they interact and influence its effectiveness. We present a casestudy based on the use of discourse analysis, focused on the failure of a blogbased training project. Our findings suggest the employees' metacognitive awareness is a significant issue in the design and implementation of a blog-based training program. Insights derived from conversation analysis suggest that to manage a blog-based training program effectively, it is crucial to deal with face-to-face interaction and the group sense-making process ‘outside' the blog.

Managing in a Post-COVID-19 World: A Stakeholder Network Perspective

This article argues that technical leaders in a post-COVID-19 world should adopt stakeholder-oriented management techniques tailored to complex, chaotic, and disordered domains. In part, this is because the unprecedented breadth of the novel coronavirus's impact has required organizations to strengthen their stakeholder orientation, given the second-order, network effects of management decisions during a global pandemic on unseen, unknown constituencies. In part, this is because even our causal models and modes of group sense-making have been affected by the suffering and uncertainty caused by the pandemic. This article draws from ongoing research on complex stakeholder networks, applying recent advances in graph theory to establish that organizations with more resilient, more efficient, more globally connected stakeholder networks better satisfy the claims of their stakeholders, across an array of financial and environmental, social and governance metrics. This research can be extended into postcrisis, chaotic, and disordered domains by adapting the Cynefin framework, from the Welsh word for “habitat,” and applying it to the stakeholder theory literature. This stakeholder network perspective yields surprisingly simple and relevant tools for managers, as shown by a case study of the real-world performance of large US firms during the period of COVID-19’s initial diffusion and impact.

Imagination, Brokers, and Boundary Objects: Interrupting the Mentor–Preservice Teacher Hierarchy When Negotiating Meanings

The mentor–preservice teacher hierarchy, that privileges mentor teacher talk and experience, often dominates mentor–preservice conversations. To realize the full potential of teacher education approaches designed to engage preservice and mentor teachers together in shared learning and teaching tasks, attention is needed to better understand the dynamics and implications of mentor–preservice teacher interactions. We analyzed how and when preservice and mentor teachers introduced ideas to group conversations and whose ideas were taken up by the group during a co-learning task. We found that mentor teachers tended to dominate group sense-making. However, preservice teacher use of imagination, the actions of teacher educators as brokers, and the use of boundary objects temporarily interrupted the dominant hierarchy. We conjecture that these moments raised preservice teacher status within the group so that mentor teachers took up preservice teachers’ ideas. Implications for promoting more equitable preservice teacher participation in sense-making with mentor teachers are discussed.

Voluntourism, sensemaking and the leisure-volunteer duality

A key feature of voluntourism is that participants expect both to be entertained and to help others to different extents. The duality between the leisure and volunteering aspects of the trip creates ambiguities in expectations. This article focusses on group sensemaking about this leisure-volunteer duality and the role of trip leaders in its management. It uses a case study approach to investigate the behaviours of participants on a voluntourist trip to South America. Among other things, it compares participants’ ex ante expectations with ex post evaluations of the trip and tracks the events that shaped views on the quality of the experience. More concretely, the key events that triggered conflicts between the leisure and volunteer dimensions of the trip are identified and analysed using the factors that influenced the sensemaking outcome. Implications centre on the importance and use of sensemaking tools for voluntourist organisations and trip leaders in the management of the leisure-volunteer tensions that are part and parcel of voluntourism.

Excellence in Practice through a Socio-Technical, Open Systems Approach to Process Analysis and Design

Nowadays, organizations pursue their aims in a context of distributed collaboration, creating a need not only for supporting work systems, but for a human-centred focus in which individual and group sense-making and learning are supported by appropriate toolsets. The authors argue that development of such toolsets requires an open systems approach. This paper discusses examples of such approaches, including non-competitive benchmarking (NCB), as a vehicle for knowledge transfer, leading to process improvement and potential for enhanced organizational performance. The paper goes on to discuss tools and techniques that may be used to support desire to reflect upon ‘best practice' in socio-technical design, without losing contextual relevance in design. The authors use these examples to explore ways in which engaged actors may be supported to create and share their contextually-dependent tacit knowledge. The foundation of open systems approaches is discussed, showing how socio-technical approaches continue to have relevance today.

Group Sense Making in Dynamic Environments: A Complex Adaptive System Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to examine ways in which complex theory informs the current sensemaking practices of firms facing turbulent environments. It is postulated that understanding sensemaking theory from this new perspective will offer new insights for scholars and practitioners as to how organizational groups adapt to environmental change. Many researchers have suggested that complexity theory (versus conventional theories) may be a better management model for understanding how organizations successfully react to change because dynamism in the marketplace. Given this premise, the existing managerial routines associated with environmental sensing and sensemaking only provide a limited success level for the turbulent marketplace that companies now face. Furthermore, much of the sensemaking literature has focused on the individual as the unit of analysis and the conversation on collaborative group sensemaking is in its early conceptual stages. Using the lens of complex adaptive systems (CAS), this paper endeavors to explore the relationship between organizational complexity, group sensemaking, and new product development efforts. A thematic synthesis comprising of multiple case studies is used to consolidate key concepts documented in the literature. A resultant theoretical framework for group sensemaking is developed and support is found for CAS as suitable organizational models for modern organizations. Interestingly, support is also found for certain managerial activities having positive effects on firm-level sensemaking activities leading to new product development. The findings from this paper suggest that group sensemaking is a distinctly different process than sensemaking for the individual and sheds some insight into specific management activities that are empirically validated on application of CAS for management in rapidly changing environments.

Perspectives on Behavior Settings

The basic unit of ecological psychology, the behavior setting, has been conceptualized and studied from two contrasting but complementary perspectives. This article describes both and proposes development of an additional perspective incorporating the subjective experiences of setting occupants. According to the traditional view, behavior settings are self-regulating, extrapersonal systems that not only provide opportunities for occupants but also constrain their actions. The contemporary view focuses on individual and group sense-making in settings: Occupants attend to, assess, and act on environmental events in light of their current knowledge and beliefs. It also considers the larger contexts of settings. Ecological psychologists have largely neglected feelings and emotions arising from people’s direct experiences of, and in, the settings they occupy. Research is needed to link such experiences with the setting features identified by the traditional and contemporary perspectives. An ethnographer’s published account of a single behavior setting, a hostess club in Japan, provides illustrations for each viewpoint presented.

Ferreting Facts or Fashioning Fallacies? Factors in Rumor Accuracy

In some situations, rumors come to reflect reality quite well and in others they become fantastic. Why? This article summarizes research on rumor accuracy. It considers rumors as unverified statements in circulation, and rumor discussion as serving group sensemaking and threat-management functions. It also explores a complementary view of rumors as memes: adaptive statements that survive or die out. Conceptualizations of rumor accuracy, methods of investigation, prospects for future social psychological study, and accuracy rates are examined. The Percolation Model of rumor accuracy is reviewed: rumor distortions and errors that occur in part because of cognitive limitations and perceptual biases are either compounded by relationship- or self-oriented aims and a circumscribed ability to test the rumor, or countervailed by accuracy motivation, message checking, and veracity checking; rumor activity hastens these processes. The multivariate, interactive, and dynamical systems nature of rumor accuracy phenomena is highlighted. The implications of this research for social epistemics are discussed.

Making Sense Through Face: Identity and Social Interaction in a Consultancy Task Force

In this article we investigate the dynamic connection between individual and social processes of sensemaking in the context of group-based interaction. Drawing on Goffman’s theory of face-to-face behaviour, we develop two main arguments. First, the grounding of identity underlying group-based interaction typically involves repeated face games during which participants attempt to influence the patterns of interaction while maintaining a coherent image of self. Second, face games generate an ‘interaction order’ that has structuring properties and is therefore central to the social construction of sense within a group setting. We illustrate our contribution through an empirical study of face games and sensemaking within a consultancy task force. The study shows that the co-presence of participants during group-based interaction is in itself an occasion for sensemaking as it enacts language-based controversies that require composition through shared construction of meaning. In addition, our findings highlight that early impressions generate sticky patterns of interaction that constrain further exchanges and affect the development and outcomes of group sensemaking. A main implication is that positive outcomes of sensemaking are contingent upon the ability of the participants collectively to generate interaction orders that are conducive to working consensus. In this regard, sensegiving mechanisms such as leadership can constructively orient interaction amongs professionals by providing a common set of expectations about behaviours.

The development of a process model of collective turnover

Based on three case studies, we constructed an inductive process model of collective turnover, those instances in organizational life when two or more people choose to leave their organization in close temporal proximity based on shared social processes. The model highlights three phases through which an escalating interaction process that culminates in collective turnover unfolds. First, two or more members of an organizational group experience unresolved dissatisfaction with some aspect of their organization. Second, individual negative experiences are transformed into shared group perceptions through group sensemaking and emotional contagion that occurs in cohesive groups that view themselves as superior to others. Third, when group members feel no hope of improvement but have other opportunities available and few constraints on leaving, they collectively decide to leave their organization, begin searching for placements, and, turn over. We propose theoretical and practical implications of this model.

Developing a learning process framework for innovation management

This research paper explores the value of developing a learning process framework for groups' sensemaking of innovative activities. The authors provide an initial grounding on the creation of a group learning process framework, by presenting academic references to organisational learning frameworks that were used to identify themes and their interrelationship. Arguments are presented to support the authors' case approach to studying group learning, and the situational uniqueness of innovation management problems and issues within a Small- to Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) context. Research findings from a longitudinal study of an SME manufacturing organisation are used to support the continual research and to provide evidence regarding the importance of group sensemaking in innovation management. Finally, the contributions to academic knowledge are presented, and considered against the value this process had for the participating organisation. Suggestions are made regarding future research opportunities, and the potential value of this process in other SMEs.

Collaborative Sensemaking Support

Sensemaking involves incomplete discovery, inaccurate interpretation, and imperfect action that will fail in someway and likely alter the situation in some unknowable way. Sensemaking demands intense, deep collaboration with participating agents, who many times are physically distributed and come from different groups and organizations. Incorporating collaboration functionality in a piecemeal approach in different ways as add-ons within a portal-based architecture can place heavy demands on users to learn, organizations to train, and ultimately limit the potential of collaboration technology to achieve organizational goals. It is proposed that individual and group sensemaking is a better starting point from which to build architectures to mitigate socio-cognitive limitations of participating agents collaborating to make sense of things. Three levels of Collaboration Envelopes™ are presented and architectural considerations presented to guide development of technology to better support collaborative sensemaking.

The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world

In this paper, we challenge the universality of three basic assumptions prevalent in organizational decision support and strategy: assumptions of order, of rational choice, and of intent. We describe the Cynefin framework, a sense-making device we have developed to help people make sense of the complexities made visible by the relaxation of these assumptions. The Cynefin framework is derived from several years of action research into the use of narrative and complexity theory in organizational knowledge exchange, decision-making, strategy, and policy-making. The framework is explained, its conceptual underpinnings are outlined, and its use in group sense-making and discourse is described. Finally, the consequences of relaxing the three basic assumptions, using the Cynefin framework as a mechanism, are considered.

Managing complexity: acknowledge the attraction patterns by supporting sensemaking and allowing the quality system to serve as the panoptic system

This paper is of a theoretical type ending with a model describing the frame and function of a quality system. Quality in health care is largely dependent on the behaviour and action of the health care staff. Furthermore behaviour and action emanate from the individual and group sensemaking. When viewing the organisation as a complex adaptive system, the necessity of becoming aware of, and co‐evolving with the process of sensemaking becomes very clear. It has potential to view the individual’s attraction patterns as the channel for creativity. The quality system can serve as the framework on which to enlighten this vital dimension. The concept of meaning status in the group is useful when it comes to managing a complex system through a quality system. When so, the core objective of the quality system is to support and enhance the awareness of all the disparate meanings (future‐perspective), stimulate reflection upon them and transform them into a collective meaning status (presence) in order to make effective decisions and a successful adaptation to change.