Interaction Sense-making Research Articles

Embracing the “fail fast and learn fast” mindset: conceptualizing learning from failure in knowledge-intensive SMEs

Abstract“Fail fast and learn fast” is a principle commonly advanced to quickly grow and scale startups and SMEs. However, the literature lacks detailed insights into how such learning is organized. The paper aims to investigate how knowledge-intensive SMEs learn from failures through organizational learning processes. To answer this question, we present in-depth case studies of three SMEs that operate in a dynamic context where quick adaption to changes, failures, and learning are natural modes of practice. Our findings present the learning from the failure process, which includes three phases: (1) failure recognition, (2) interactive sensemaking, and (3) organizational adaptation. We condense our insights into a framework disentangling how SMEs succeed and fail and how they can learn from failures through their underlying learning processes. We contribute to prior literature on organizational learning in SMEs by focusing on knowledge-intensive SMEs and practices that enable effective learning from failures.

Collaborative Mistrust: The Communicative Function of Alternative Facts in Social Media Interactions

Understanding social media discourses as conversations and interpreting them as such allows reconstructing the communicative function of alternative facts as a practical achievement making a difference in interactive sensemaking. Using the documentary method approach to conversation analysis for interpreting the doing of alternative facts in conversations on the Facebook pages of the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), this article shows: (1) doing alternative facts has to be understood in the context of identity performances which bracket questions of facticity; (2) doing alternative facts is part of an overarching conversational dynamic of “suspicious investigation” held together by a shared orientation toward un-truthing mainstream reality construction; (3) and this dynamic immunizes itself against critique via identity performance and identity misrecognition.

On the Student Internet Activity via Both Virtual Simulations and Remote Laboratory for Scientific Education

Focusing on the approach for developing professional skills, this paper is dedicated to the University on-line education as a pedagogical tool for material science and solid state physics as well. Two strategies described within the comparative analysis are based on the students tests performed at the Southern Federal University. A remote access to the research laboratory infrastructure allows our approach for the interactive simulations-based learning process with the provision of individual educational programs to be launched. This problem is presently of urgent interests, and applied in material science we have discussed its importance from different perspectives, i.e. to teach X-ray spectroscopy via the interactive software simulation of modern equipment or to perform a research at remote laboratories in a real time. Within this note we conceptually analyse some quantitative data of the learning process for a number of students that formed at both interactive sense-making and learning by doing.

Serial Focus Groups: A Longitudinal Design for Studying Interactive Discourse

Focus group methods specialize in the analysis of interactive discourse, but are only rarely employed as a stand-alone method to study such phenomena, owing to inherent limitations concerning the comparability and generalizability of findings. In this paper, we argue that focus groups undergo three kinds of transformations, involving changes in participants’ cognitive states, social ties, and discursive behavior, which raise both analytic challenges and valuable opportunities for the study of shared meanings and interactive negotiation processes in society. Introducing Serial Focus Groups, we extend familiar focus group designs as a method for studying interactive discourse in a longitudinal perspective, capitalizing on the analytic potentials raised by these transformations. Reviewing the methodological literature and drawing upon two large-scale focus group studies of socially interactive sense-making, we argue that serial focus groups can help overcome some of the limitations of cross-sectional focus groups and offer valuable new opportunities for analysis and validation.

Interactive Sensemaking in the SME Internationalization Process

Internationalization for SMEs is often seen as a question of organization. However, the organizing of international activities and interactive sensemaking (seen as making sense, giving sense, and deriving sense) can be seen as an interrelated process. This paper focuses on clarifying how inter-organizational interactions affect actors' knowledge and learning outcomes in the SME internationalization process. By leveraging multiple case data over time, the empirical and theoretical framework contributes to an overall understanding of interactive sensemaking. Seven SMEs were followed over one year while participating in an internationalization event facilitated by clusters and networks with a healthcare and welfare focus. The first conclusion drawn is that interactive sensemaking is affected through bonding activities in the SME managers' relations. Secondly, bonding and bridging are both preconditions to giving sense and taking action. Therefore, sensemaking and organizing the SMEs internationalization networks are two interrelated processes.

Narrative Connection: Applying CNSM Theory’s Translational Storytelling Heuristic

ABSTRACT Storytelling functions as a means for making sense of and reframing difficulty. The translational storytelling heuristic of communicated narrative sense-making theory proposes that storytelling interventions which facilitate narrative reflection, positive re-framing, and interactional sense-making will positively benefit individuals and families. In this article we describe the process of synthesizing CNSM theory with narrative medicine, narrative theory of identity, and narrative therapy to create a translational storytelling intervention called narrative connection. We then offer a case study using an adaptation of this intervention in the context of parenting. Nine parents in two groups completed the three-week narrative parenting intervention. Preliminary results of the case study suggest that the intervention resulted in an overarching sense of solidarity among parents, facilitates feeling understood, contributes to deeper (self) awareness, and facilitates reassurance, reframing, curiosity, and validation. Overarching benefits included feeling not alone and future plans to be more vulnerable with other parents.

How patients and clinicians experience the utility of a personalized clinical feedback system in routine practice.

The objective was to explore how a person-adaptive clinical feedback system (CFS) effects its users, and how meaning and relevance are negotiated. We conducted a 10-month case-study of the implementation and practice of Norse Feedback, a personalized CFS. The data material consisted of 12 patient interviews, 22 clinician interviews, 23 field notes, and 16 archival documents. We identified four main categories or themes: (i) patients' use of clinical feedback for enhanced awareness and insight; (ii) patients work to make clinical feedback a communication mode; (iii) patients and clinicians negotiate clinical feedback as a way to influence treatment; and (iv) clinical feedback requires an interactive sense-making effort. Patients and therapists produced the meaning and relevance of the CFS by interpreting the CFS measures to reflect the unique patient experience of the patient-therapist relationship. Patients regarded CFS as a tool to inform therapy with important issues. Patients became more self-aware and prepared for therapy.

Unpacking Conjoint Behavioral Consultation: A Latent Profile Analysis of Parent-Teacher Interactions

ABSTRACT Conjoint behavioral consultation (CBC) is a model of consultation wherein parents and teachers partner to address children’s social-behavioral concerns. The teacher-parent relationship has proven critical to the success of CBC, yet little is known about the dynamics in CBC that may promote these relationships. This study explored interactions among teachers and parents during CBC. Using latent profile analysis, four interactional sense-making behaviors (i.e., engagement, perspective-taking, turn-taking, and coherence) were examined among 193 parents and teachers participating in CBC. Three classes of interactions emerged – one class characterized by high interactional sense-making (18%), another characterized by moderate interactional sense-making (69%), and one class characterized by low interactional sense-making (13%). Follow-up analyses suggested differences in the quality of this relationship based on the interactions displayed by parents and teachers, with dyads that displayed high and moderate patterns of interactional sense-making reporting better quality relationships than those demonstrating low patterns of interactional sense-making.

Interactive Visual Analytics for Sensemaking with Big Text

Abstract Analysts face many steep challenges when performing sensemaking tasks on collections of textual information larger than can be reasonably analyzed without computational assistance. To scale up such sensemaking tasks, new methods are needed to interactively integrate human cognitive sensemaking activity with machine learning. Towards that goal, we offer a human-in-the-loop computational model that mirrors the human sensemaking process, and consists of foraging and synthesis sub-processes. We model the synthesis loop as an interactive spatial projection and the foraging loop as an interactive relevance ranking combined with topic modeling. We combine these two components of the sensemaking process using semantic interaction such that the human's spatial synthesis actions are transformed into automated foraging and synthesis of new relevant information. Ultimately, the model's ability to forage as a result of the analyst's synthesis activities makes interacting with big text data easier and more efficient, thereby facilitating analysts' sensemaking ability. We discuss the interaction design and theory behind our interactive sensemaking model. The model is embodied in a novel visual analytics prototype called Cosmos in which analysts synthesize structure within the larger corpus by directly interacting with a reduced-dimensionality space to express relationships on a subset of data. We then demonstrate how Cosmos supports sensemaking tasks with a realistic scenario that investigates the affect of natural disasters in Adelaide, Australia in September 2016 using a database of over 30,000 news articles.

Learning science with an interactive simulator: negotiating the practice-theory barrier

ABSTRACTThis article investigates how interactive representations can be used to enhance conceptual learning. It is a naturalistic study of 14 students in four groups aged 16–17 years working with an interactive simulator. The article is based on qualitative data to enable analyses of the students’ processes of conceptual learning as interactive sense-making, as discussions, verbalisation and use. The activities of the learners are studied in detail from a socio-constructive perspective with regard to how they relate previous knowledge and experiences to theory, investigating the progress of conceptual learning inspired by the notion of a coordination class (diSessa, A. A., & Sherin, B. L. [1998]. What changes in conceptual change? International Journal of Science Education, 20(10), 1155–1191. doi:10.1080/0950069980201002). This process brings design issues related to conceptual learning to the fore. The study points towards a revised inquiry approach in which a digital representation can be used to negotiate a meeting point between theory, previous experience and knowledge, and be instrumental in conceptual sense-making.

Perceptions of Joint Family Storytelling as Mediators of Family Communication Patterns and Family Strengths

Using family communication patterns theory, this study tested the degree to which perceptions of joint family storytelling mediate the relationship between family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity orientations) and family strengths. Participants included 267 young adults from first-marriage families. Results indicated that conversation orientation is positively associated with the interactional sense-making (ISM) behaviors that characterize jointly told family stories (i.e., engagement, polite turn-taking, perspective-taking and coherence) and family strengths, while conformity orientation is negatively associated with ISM behaviors and family strengths. Indirect effects emerged for conversation and conformity orientations on family strengths through perceptions of ISM behaviors. Specifically, perceptions of storytelling engagement and polite turn-taking mediated the positive association between conversation orientation and family strength, while engagement, perspective-taking, and polite turn-taking mediated the inverse association between conformity orientation and family strength.

Collaborative Educational Leadership: The Emergence of Human Interactional Sense-Making Process as a Complex System

Abstract

Combining Laboratory Experiments with Digital Tools to Do Scientific Inquiry

This qualitative study investigates the gap between a lab experiment and theory of science. Two groups of 4 students in 2 different classes in 11th grade (15–16 years old) are followed as they process results and experiences from a lab experiment using a digital environment. The experiment is as a part of a larger project about genes and cells, and this study concerns how the digital environment can support students' sensemaking. The study shows how the students only are left with ‘how-to' skills before they engage in collaborative processing supported by their own picture from the experiment. The picture becomes a hub for interactive sensemaking and is extensively used for annotation and discussion. Four elements in the digital support are identified as crucial: an extendable point of reference, facilitation to compare and contrast, a pointer to standard science knowledge, and a structure to guide the students to significant issues. The study identifies where the digital support succeeds and fails in this process of sensemaking from a lab experiment.

Organizational inscriptions of network pictures: A meso-level analysis

This paper deals with organizational inscriptions of managerial cognitions elaborating on the emerging concept of network pictures. While previous studies on network pictures have concentrated on individual managers' cognitive views of business networks, this study operates on a focal company level (meso-level) and is concerned with how managerial cognitions are manifested in organizational artifacts, which in turn guide business activities. The paper presents a typological model of traces of such inscriptions, which, thereby, becomes a means to capture managers' interactive sense-making of a company's network. We identify organizational inscriptions of managerial cognitions in the areas of strategy, organization, systems, processes, and budgets. Using a comparative-static case study involving mergers and acquisitions of a focal company over time, we exemplify the different organizational inscriptions.

From Narrative Inheritance to Narrative Momentum: Past, Present, and Future Stories in an International Adoptive Family

This autoethnographic work of an international adoptive family tells a series of stories situated in the past, present, and future of the family's experience as it relates to how international adoption has influenced their family identity. Through the concepts of narrative inheritance, joint storytelling as a family, interactional sense-making, and family culture as local model, the series of stories reveal an underlying “narrative momentum,” which orients toward a future storytelling experience. Through this imagined future, the authors speculate on how the past and present are already writing a future that is still unfolding, yet exert tremendous influence on the way the family makes sense of their unique identity and culture. The work also situates international adoptive families as a category of the broader international family form and offers autoethnography as one way to study family storytelling.

Exploring Links Between Well-Being and Interactional Sense-Making in Married Couples' Jointly Told Stories of Stress

Narrative theorizing suggests that narrating stress, difficulty, or trauma can be beneficial for improved mental health, yet extant research tends to consider narrating stress as an individual or psychological construct. However, in close relationships, people often experience shared stressors and jointly tell their shared stories of difficulty to others. Thus, joint storytelling processes likely also relate to individual health. We tested this expectation using a series of actor-partner interdependence models and path analyses in a study that included 68 couples' video-recorded joint storytelling interactions. Findings primarily indicate relationships between husbands', wives', and couples' storytelling behaviors and husbands' mental health. Generally speaking, however, storytelling behaviors did not predict wives' mental health. Interpretations, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

Telling Tales: Enacting Family Relationships in Joint Storytelling About Difficult Family Experiences

Narratives help people make sense of difficult experiences. In addition, stories provide insight into people's conceptualizations of the world, including their understanding of their family relationships. Given these two functions of storytelling, the ways in which family members tell stories about difficult experiences together should reveal or reflect relational qualities. This project focused on how the family relational context relates to jointly-enacted sense-making behaviors as families tell stories of shared difficult experiences. Findings indicate that interactional sense-making behaviors, in particular coherence and perspective-taking, predict important family relational qualities. This suggests that family qualities affect and are reflected in the likelihood that family members will engage in productive sense-making behaviors as a unit when talking about a shared difficult experience.