Process Of Sensegiving Research Articles

Principals’ sense-making and sense-giving of their professional role tensions: School leaders’ professionalism and creative mediation strategies during Covid-19 crisis

School principals are located at the interface between competing demands by a wide spectrum of stakeholders leading to tensions and ambiguities in their role. Understanding principals’ role tensions within organizational and occupational professionalism during Covid-19 crisis is of considerable importance for improving the capacity of school leadership. This qualitative study examines Israeli principals’ considerations and creative mediation strategies while facing competing accountabilities via the theoretical framework of sense-making and sense-giving in times of crisis. Using a collective case study design, data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 16 elementary and high school principals and policy documents, and analyzed thematically via ATLAS.ti software. The analysis surfaced three strategies and two considerations: (1) school leaders’ sense-making processes yielding protective mediation strategies based on retaining moral discretion; and (2) school leaders’ sense-giving processes transferring collaborative and contrived mediation strategies based on establishing the school's moral-professional cultural orientation. The contribution of this study to the research literature suggests contrived mediation as an innovative school leaders’ strategy. We provide practical implications within training and professional development programs for school leaders advocating principalship mentoring valuing uniqueness to experienced and novice principals.

Stereotyped gender roles and scripts in digital dating abuse: Narratives from an Italian high school

This study analyses teenage narratives of digital dating abuse (DDA) by focusing on how the sense-giving processes of social media usage practices interplay with sexist stereotypes and gender scripts. The theoretical framework draws upon gender-oriented studies on DDA and upon literature on gender and technology, which accounts for the mutual shaping relationship between gender-based social norms, and user negotiations with social media affordances. We carried out seven focus groups in Rome with 43 high school students aged 14 to 16. Responses show that, although both girls and boys perpetrate and suffer DDA on social media, participants interpret it according to gender scripts and classify users based on sexist stereotypes. Findings also reveal that perception of the seriousness of DDA is blurred by the combination of gender scripts and the meanings attached to social media usage practices. DDA is likely to be tolerated unless it has concrete fallout offline, where abuse is tangible.

Confronting the Contested Past: Sensemaking and Rhetorical History in the Reconstruction of Organizational Identity

This study explores how organizations experience and respond to identity challenges that arise due to conflicting interpretations of their past. Drawing on a case study of a fintech venture, we offer a process model that illuminates the unfolding of “temporal identity complexity,” a sensemaking process that involves different members developing conflicting understandings of how the past undermines the organizational identity. Our model also reveals how leaders can restore members’ beliefs in the organizational identity through “temporal synergizing,” a sensegiving process that recombines conflicting interpretations of the past to support desired identity claims in the present and future. In contrast with prior research that emphasizes the need to construe a sense of identity continuity over time, we show how organizations can instead capitalize on perceived discontinuity in their past to reaffirm identity. We discuss this and other contributions to research on organizational identity, focusing on its threads on sensemaking and rhetorical history. This includes exploring the important role that temporality and emotions play in organizational identity reconstruction.

“Silence is Not an Option!” Is (Liberal) CEO Activism Beneficial to Firm Performance?

This study frames CEO activism as a sensegiving process and focuses on the effects of CEO activism on organizational outcomes. We propose that the effects of CEO activism on firm performance are contingent upon whether CEO activism is perceived as congruent with employees’ dominant political ideology. As a symbolic action, CEO activism has the power to influence employees’ values and goals; therefore, when it is aligned with employees’ political ideology, it will engender a positive employees’ cognitive, affective and behavioral response in the organization, which will ultimately benefit firm performance. However, such positive outcomes will be hindered when the executive is perceived as not invested in the activism. By contrast, CEOs who are also firm founders tend to amplify the beneficial effects of CEO activism. All of these findings were derived from tests of a sample of 236 CEOs who engaged in activism between 2015 and 2018 and a total of 880 firm-year observations. Through a set of post-hoc and supplementary analyses we also tested for endogeneity concerns, treatment effects, and the plausibility of our theoretical mechanism.

Tell Me a Story: A Sensemaking and Sense-giving Perspective On IPOs

This study adopts a sensemaking and sense-giving perspective to examine how venture capital affiliation influence its portfolio companies' IPO performance beyond the certification effect. We argue that the IPO company engages in a sensemaking and sense-giving process to tell a story to investors and influence their perceptions. The narratives help shape investors' perceptions by conveying entrepreneurial orientation and customer orientation. Based on a dataset consisting of 1,831 companies that went public between 2005-2019, we use PLS-SEM to test a multiple mediation model. The results suggest that venture capital presence positively affects IPO performance through increasing entrepreneurial orientation and customer orientation narratives in the prospectus.

No Need to Know It All: Implications of COVID‐19 for Corporate Communication Research

No Need to Know It All: Implications of COVID‐19 for Corporate Communication Research

Reflexive sensegiving: An open-ended process of influencing the sensemaking of others during organizational change

In this paper, we contribute to the understanding of how managers engage in efforts to influence the sensemaking of others without prescribing a specific redefinition of organizational reality, and doing this while trying to empower their subordinates. Through observations of leadership conferences and interviews, we followed an attempt to establish a new management philosophy in the Swedish police. The aim of the initiative was to facilitate the development of independent co-workers with little or no hierarchical support. The results show how managers utilize reflexivity in sensegiving to facilitate participants’ sensemaking. We suggest the following definition for reflexive sensegiving: a multivocal process aiming to influence how the sensemaking and construction of meaning evolves. Reflexive sensegiving has four distinctive features: open-endedness, low control over cues given, several sources of cues, and the encouragement of complexity and ambiguity. Our contribution, which has conceptual and theoretical consequences, is centred around new outlooks on the content, agent(s), and process of sensegiving.

Transforming technology-mediated health-care services through strategic sense-giving

PurposeService research has previously documented service providers’ role in addressing the barriers of technology mediation, mostly at the service delivery level. The purpose of this study is to enhance our understanding about the role of service providers who hold strategic and operational roles, as well as investigate the impact of coordinated, organization-wide initiatives in dealing with the demands and associated emotional ambivalence of technology-mediated services.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study draws from a series of in-depth interviews with health-care service providers who hold strategic and operational roles in health-care organizations along with participant observation to develop an understanding of the broader organizational context of telehealth services.FindingsThis paper outlines the strategic sense-giving process and highlights how health-care service providers who hold strategic and operational roles enact the sense-giver role. This study illustrates that strategic sense-giving involves the recognition of sense-making gaps; identification of sense-giving opportunities; and provision of templates of action.Originality/valueThis study illustrates that sense-giving can be performed by a number of organizational members in a more formalized way which extends informal sense-giving efforts at the peer-to-peer level. The importance of strategic sense-giving in providing templates of action for service providers and consumers is highlighted. This study also shows how strategic sense-giving safeguards against confusion and errors by communicating appropriate ways of using technology. Finally, the role of strategic sense-giving in helping service providers and consumers cope with the emotional ambivalence of technology-mediated service interactions are demonstarted.

The Exchange, Formalization, and Implementation of Meaning in Sensemaking Conflicts

This paper draws on previous sensemaking and sensegiving research in an attempt to explain how repeated situations of competing understandings around issues could lead to a catastrophic outcome. We provide insights to this question by drawing on qualitative data from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. We analyze four critical events (i.e., sensemaking conflicts) that took place during the months leading up to the disaster. These events have in common that 1) multiple understandings existed as to how the event should be dealt with; and, 2) action was required to overcome the event and proceed with the operations. Our findings suggest that these sensemaking conflicts were solved through a three-stage sensegiving process consisting of meaning exchange, meaning formalization, and meaning implementation, where organizational systems and procedures were used as devices to strengthen the effectiveness of sensegiving. We also suggest that access to such devices varied between organizational members, thereby creating a disadvantage for some of the members to successfully transmit their understanding to others. We propose that the recurrence of these sensemaking conflicts and their interconnectedness led the decision-makers to vastly underestimate the riskiness of the situation, thereby contributing to the occurrence of the disaster.

It’s a Relationship Business! An Embedded Network’s Internationalization as a Process of Sense-Giving and Sensemaking: The Case of Japan, Shipping Industry

Abstract This is an exploratory study, it seeks to understand internationalization of a business group as a process of sense-making on the individual level. The focus of the enquiry is a Japanese shipping group, bulk cargo segment and seeks to answer the question how a network’s administrative heritage enables and/or inhibits the performance of relationship management processes in the context of multiple embeddedness and internationalization. The study finds, that the industry at large and the Japanese Business Group (JBG) as institutions act as enablers for the effective management of existing relationships worldwide by delegating action to the field through standardized processes and shared understandings. As for identifying and developing new relational opportunities, JBG as an institution inhibits coordination and sensemaking capabilities by its strict vertical power hierarchy and a concentration of authority and resources in headquarters.

Giving sense and changing perceptions in the implementation of the performance management system in public sector organisations in developing countries

PurposeChange in public organisations has become inevitable in modern times. Yet, implementing change continues to be problematic, especially the attempt to introduce performance management (PM) in the sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine how HR managers are using sensegiving processes to attempt to institutionalise PM in public organisations in Ghana PM in public organisations in Ghana.Design/methodology/approachThe paper utilises the mixed methods approach to examine the process of sensegiving. In using this method, the authors used focus group, as well as individual interview techniques and a quantitative survey of some selected organisations in the public sector.FindingsThe results of the study show that, four main activities, i.e. workshops, seminars and training, one-on-one communication, and unit meetings are employed in the process. The analysis indicates that these activities have become quite effective in the quest to change perceptions about PM in the sector.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was limited to a few organisations. Hence, it will be necessary to expand it, if possible to the entire public sector to see if the same results will be obtained.Practical implicationsIt shows that reformers must be cognisant of the views of employees in developing and implementing reforms that focus on changing both individual orientations and organisational and culture.Originality/valueThis is the first time such a study has been done in Ghana. Furthermore, studies on PM institutionalisation and implementation have either been qualitative or quantitative in nature. Studies using the mixed methods approach are rare, with those we know coming mostly from the Western World. Thus, this paper is one of the few to examine this issue using the mixed methods approach and more so from a developing country’s perspective.

O Sensegiving no Processo de Elaboração de Sentido da Estratégia em Pequenas Empresas Caracterizadas como Organizações Híbridas

Through the perspective of strategy as a practice, it is important to understand the process of sensegiving in the elaboration of the sense of strategy in small companies, characterized as hybrid organizations, understood from social business. It starts from the idea that the tensions inherent in these types of organizations require a sensegiving efforts in their narratives in order for their strategy to be shared. In order to understand sensegiving in the process of making sense of strategy in hybrid organizations, this paper takes the perspective of strategy as practice and constructs its argument into two parts. It presents strategy as practice and strategizing , focusing on the process of sensegiving and in the organizational narratives. Later, it brings the institutional logic, which gives support to understand the hybrid organizations. In this context, it has opted for analyzing and collecting empirical evidence through narrative interviews and secondary documents. The chosen field of research was the social business because it was considered an ideal type of hybrid organization. Two small organizations have been studied. They are here nominated as Alfa and Beta. It has been shown that the organizational complexity of social business is due to the tension between two logics that seem to be contrasting, but that allow an organization to operate in order to achieve its sustainability, since in the case of social businesses the market logic gives support to that, it is possible to achieve social benefit. However, given this apparent duality and contrast, these organizations need to reinforce their sensegiving effort for their narratives in order to assist their audience in understanding their strategies.

The Critical Role of Moderators in Leader Sensegiving: A Literature Review

Change initiatives entail a high risk of failure if leaders cannot convey the underlying sense to employees. However, the effectiveness of leader sensegiving depends on external as well as internal factors. Moderators of the leader sensegiving process represent a critical but underexplored factor of sensegiving during organizational change. We derive a theoretical model of contextual factors by reviewing existing sensegiving literature. Drawing on information-processing theory, we highlight the influence of crucial moderators at the organizational and individual levels during two phases of the sensegiving process: in the first phase, moderators affect how leaders set up sensegiving; in the second phase, moderators affect how employees engage in sensemaking. The moderators in the first phase are (a) schema consistency at the organizational level and (b) legitimate power at the individual level. During the second phase, the moderating effect of (c) schema consistency at the organizational level and (d) employee emotions at the individual level is explored. We contribute to literature by demonstrating how moderators affect sensegiving during organizational change at two phases of the process and providing a multi-level perspective by distinguishing between moderators at the organizational and individual levels.

Organizational identity via recruitment and communication: Lessons from the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project

AbstractA study of the efforts employed among scientific, engineering, and support staff in the early phases of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project outside Marseille, France, found that the management of communication tools as part of a strategic sense‐giving process enabled the formation of a transitional identity. This eased employees' transition into their new surroundings and fostered their engagement with the organization and its mission. Having implications for both the motivation and retention of employees, the findings show that sense making and sense giving using communication tools affects the pace at which an organization can forge an organizational identity. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The implementation evaluation of primary care groups of practice: a focus on organizational identity

BackgroundSince 2002 the Health Ministry of Québec (Canada) has been implementing a primary care organizational innovation called 'family medicine groups'. This is occurring in a political context in which the reorganization of primary care is considered necessary to improve health care system performance. More specifically, the purpose of this reform has been to overcome systemic deficiencies in terms of accessibility and continuity of care. This paper examines the first years of implementation of the family medicine group program, with a focus on the emergence of the organizational identity of one of the pilot groups located in the urban area of Montreal.MethodsAn in-depth longitudinal case study was conducted over two and a half years. Face to face individual interviews with key informants from the family medicine group under study were conducted over the research period considered. Data was gathered throuhg observations and documentary analysis. The data was analyzed using temporal bracketing and Fairclough's three-dimensional critical discourse analytical techniques.ResultsThree different phases were identified over the period under study. During the first phase, which corresponded to the official start-up of the family medicine group program, new resources and staff were only available at the end of the period, and no changes occurred in medical practices. Power struggles between physicians and nurses characterized the second phase, resulting in a very difficult integration of advanced nurse practitioners into the group. Indeed, the last phase was portrayed by initial collaborative practices associated with a sensegiving process prompted by a new family medicine group director.ConclusionsThe creation of a primary care team is a very challenging process that goes beyond the normative policy definitions of who is on the team or what the team has to do. To fulfil expectations of quality improvement through team-based care, health care professionals who are required to work together need shared time/space contexts to communicate; to overcome interprofessional and interpersonal conflicts; and to make sense of and define who they collectively are and what they do as a clinical team.

MANAGERIAL & ORGANIZATIONAL COGNITION Conference Paper Abstracts.

Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings includes abstracts of all papers and symposia presented at the annual conference, plus 6-page abridged versions of the “Best Papers” accepted for inclusion in the program (approximately 10%). Papers published in the Proceedings are abridged because presenting papers at their full length could preclude subsequent journal publication. Please contact the author(s) directly for the full papers. ArticlesMANAGERIAL & ORGANIZATIONAL COGNITION Conference Paper Abstracts.Published Online:30 Nov 2017https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2007.26523589AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail AbstractThe article presents abstracts of conference papers. They include "A DRAMATURGICAL INQUIRY INTO SENSEMAKING AND SENSEGIVING PROCESSES DURING AN ORGANIZATIONAL CRISIS," "A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN? RELATIONSHIPS OF ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY AND SPIRITUALITY," "A SOCIAL-COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE ON FIRM INNOVATION," "A SYSTEMIC FRAMEWORK FOR IMPROVING CONTROL CENTER COGNITION," and "A THEORY OF RELATIONSHIP CREATIVITY."FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 2007, No. 1 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 30 November 2017 Published in print 1 August 2007 InformationCopyright of Academy of Management Journal is the property of Academy of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.KeywordsABSTRACTSCREATIVE abilityCRISIS managementBUSINESS planningBUSINESS logisticsDownload PDF

Knowledge Management:: The Benefits and Limitations of Computer Systems

Much organisational effort has been put into knowledge management initiatives in recent years, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been central to many of these initiatives. However, organisations have found that levering knowledge through ICTs is often hard to achieve. This paper addresses the question of why this is the case, and what we can learn of value to the future practice of knowledge management. The analysis in the paper is based on a human-centred view of knowledge, emphasising the deep tacit knowledge which underpins human thought and action, and the complex sense-reading and sense-giving processes which human beings carry out in communicating with each other and ‘sharing’ knowledge. The paper concludes that computer-based systems can be of benefit in knowledge-based activities, but only if we are careful in using such systems to support the development and communication of human meaning.