Sensemaking Approach Research Articles

Leadership competencies and blockchain implementation in public sector organizations: a sensemaking approach

Leadership competencies and blockchain implementation in public sector organizations: a sensemaking approach

Adaptive sense-making for crises in interorganizational projects: The case of International Islamabad Airport project

Crisis is getting attention in project management literature; despite such efforts the topic is still in its infancy. The amount of impact crises has on interorganizational projects drastically increases the significance of crisis management research and calls for dire need to make sense of them. Hence, the purpose of this research is to enhance the understanding of sense-making for crises when multiple organizations are involved in an interorganizational project. We collected data using interviews, observations, archival documents, and illustrative materials to study the case of the International Islamabad Airport project in Pakistan. For analysis, we used grounded theory. Findings provide evidence that both sense-making and sense-giving processes are integrated and engaged for making sense of crises in interorganizational projects. We identified three dimensions of interorganizational sense-making: information gathering (through internal and external sources); crisis interpretation (exogenous, endogenous, social, and technical crises); and reactive responses, which involve direct responses for controllable crises and indirect responses for uncontrollable crises. We also found reporting/recording crises to be an element of sense-giving. The study offers valuable insights on crisis management in interorganizational projects, suggesting that interorganizational projects can better respond to crises by adopting an adaptive and cyclic sense-making approach.

Meaningful work in a grocery store: a phenomenological sensemaking approach to job crafting among store workers

ABSTRACT What constitutes meaningful work in contexts associated with routines and low-skill work, such as grocery stores? And how do workers contribute to making their work meaningful in such contexts? We expand the conception of meaningful work beyond meaning in terms of significance found in the job crafting literature. Employing a phenomenological sensemaking perspective on data material combining participatory observations in a grocery store and in-depth interviews with employees, we find that store workers continuously engage in work aimed at maintaining the technical material, and social order of the store, that is ongoingly ‘micro-disturbed’ by customers who, e.g., pick groceries from shelves, ask for assistance and sometimes shoplift. Sensitized by this phenomenological sensemaking perspective, we also demonstrate how this ‘maintenance work’ manifests as cognitive and behavioral (practical) crafting and clarify their intertwined nature, a previously unresolved conceptual puzzle in the job crafting literature.

‘Where is the diversity in this facility?’ Experiences of emergency care among visible minority individuals in Kingston, Ontario

ABSTRACT Introduction Visible minorities, a growing segment of Canada's population, have voiced concerns about experiencing racism while receiving care in the emergency department (ED). Understanding the ED care experiences of visible minorities is crucial to improving care and reducing health disparities. Methods From June to August 2021, we collected data from participants in Kingston, Ontario using a sensemaking approach. Individuals who had accessed emergency care or accompanied someone else to the ED in the prior 24 months were eligible to participate. After sharing a brief narrative about their care experience, participants interpreted the experience by plotting their perspectives on a variety of pre-determined questions. Here, we conducted a thematic analysis of narratives involving patients who identified as visible minorities and complemented it with quantitative analysis of the participants’ interpretative responses. This mixed-methods approach highlighted the distinct experiences of visible minority participants in relation to a comparison group. Results Of the 1973 unique participants, 117 identified as a visible minority and 949 participants did not identify with an equity-deserving group (comparison group). Visible minority participants were more likely to report that too little attention was paid to their identity and more likely to express a desire for a balance between receiving the best medical care and being treated with kindness and respect. Visible minorities’ ED experiences were also more likely to be impacted by how emergency staff behaved. Qualitative analysis revealed negative experiences of feeling uninformed and disempowered, facing judgement and discrimination, and experiencing language barriers. Positive experiences of receiving compassionate care from staff also emerged. Conclusion Visible minority perceptions of ED care were often negative and mainly focused on staff treatment. Cultural competency and language translation services are key areas for improvement to make ED care more accessible and equitable.

Immigrant Grassroots Associations in the Netherlands: A Sense-Making Approach to Understanding Exclusion From Endowed Foundation Funding

Immigrant Grassroots Associations in the Netherlands: A Sense-Making Approach to Understanding Exclusion From Endowed Foundation Funding

Childhood experiences and personal traits as predictors of reliance on science and on religion to make sense of the world: results of a national US study

ABSTRACT People often rely on two distinct worldviews, religion and science, to make sense of the world, and the degree to which they rely on each holds profound implications for their lives. However, the precursors shaping these different sense-making approaches remain poorly understood. The present study examined the extent to which individuals’ recollected childhood religion- and science-related experiences, along with personal traits, were associated with their present reliance on these ways of making sense. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with a representative sample of U.S. adults. Multivariate regression modeling simultaneously assessed predictors of reliance on religion (RoR) and reliance on science (RoS) after controlling for age, gender, income and education. Among retrospective childhood predictors, greater religious credibility-enhancing displays by caregivers predicted current higher RoR and lower RoS. Opportunities for science learning during childhood predicted increased RoS but were not significantly associated with RoR. Among current measures of personal traits, higher levels of agreeableness predicted both RoR and RoS. Distinct associations were also found: authoritarianism predicted only RoR, while openness and (inversely) extraversion predicted RoS. This study enhances our understanding of the complex interplay between childhood experiences, personal traits, and reliance on religion and science in adulthood.

Faculty’s Role in Creating a (Remote) Sense of Community Among Faculty and Facilitating Contexts of Care for Students

Objectives: This qualitative study employed a sensemaking approach to understand faculty members’ sensemaking of their roles during the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergency transition to remote teaching and learning. Methods: An email invitation to participate in the study was sent to faculty who taught in an MBA program during both the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 academic school years. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 14 faculty members who self-selected to participate in the study. Results: Two salient themes emerged from the research: <em>creating a (remote) sense of community among faculty</em> and <em>facilitating contexts of care for students</em>. These findings highlight the mission-central importance of faculty, the role of teaching, and the need to support faculty as they support students in higher education. Conclusions: As a result of the emergency transition to remote teaching and learning, faculty gained an increased awareness of the importance of human connection and interaction, which made them develop a whole-person approach both to colleagues and students. Implications: How well institutions plan for and support their faculty during times of crises will influence the institution’s capacity for student support and the personal impact of the crisis on faculty.

Leveraging healthcare standards-based improvement initiatives to support learning and continuous improvement: lessons from implementing the Ideal Clinic programme in Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract Background This paper draws on the experiences of a group of health system leaders and researchers in leading and supporting, respectively, the implementation of the Ideal Clinic Realisation and Maintenance Framework (ICRMF) in Cape Town, South Africa. The ICRMF is a national standards-based quality improvement initiative that seeks to improve the quality of care in public primary healthcare (PHC) facilities. We share lessons learned on how efforts to improve healthcare standards can be leveraged for learning and meaningful system change. Methods A three-pronged approach to improving the implementation of the ICRMF was used in 15 PHC facilities across two sub-districts. The approach included (i) nurturing trust, (ii) changing the ICRMF assessment strategy, and (iii) promoting a collaborative and collective sense-making approach to understanding performance and addressing gaps. Routine ICRMF quantitative data and qualitative feedback from both the ICRMF assessment process and routine management meetings were used to reflect on the experience of using this approach and to draw lessons. The results and conclusions were further confirmed through member-checking. Results We found that using the three-pronged approach, the ICRMF assessments were able to facilitate deep and reflexive conversations about everyday health system challenges facing healthcare delivery in the sub-districts, while encouraging collective sensemaking and collaboration. The ICRMF was often perceived as a compliance-driven exercise with limited value on the actual quality of care. The three-pronged approach helped shift some of these perceptions and improved the experiences of facility managers in implementing the programme. Conclusion When supported by trusting relationships, reflexive processes and multidisciplinary ownership and collaboration, healthcare standards programmes such as the ICRMF can provide powerful avenues for learning and meaningful change. Our limited dataset could not demonstrate if our approach addresses the challenge of maintaining standards or not (which is linked to continuous improvement).

CSR fit with CEO image: Unpacking its influence on stakeholder engagement and authenticity perception

ABSTRACT This study explores the significant role of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in communicating a corporation’s commitment to Social Responsibility (CSR) and their influence on consumer engagement in CSR initiatives. This study introduces a conceptual model that integrates the sense-making approach and social exchange theory within the CSR domain. The model posits a positive correlation between a CEO’s ethical leadership, their personal image congruence with CSR initiatives, and consumer engagement in CSR. Central to this study is the empirical testing of the model, which revealed that CSR authenticity and Consumer-Company Identification (CCI) significantly mediate the relationship between CEO attributes and consumer engagement. Data collected from an online survey with 988 respondents supported that CEOs who are perceived as ethically sound and whose personal image aligns with CSR initiatives tend to foster higher levels of consumer engagement through enhanced perceptions of CSR authenticity and strengthened CCI. These findings offer new insights into the dynamics of CEO influence on CSR communication and consumer engagement.

The socio-aesthetic construction of meaning in digitally mediated environments: a digital sensemaking approach

AbstractSensemaking has recently been identified as a driver of society developments, in particular in the context of designing a reasonable, valuable, and fair life. Since the construction of meaning is a crucial momentum in sensemaking processes, the authors investigate how meaning can be constructed in a sustaining form by utilizing digital means of expression, articulation, sharing of information, and creation of artscience artefacts. The authors report on results of exploring cyber-physical-systems with performative methodologies in the context of sensemaking to identify sensemaking processes of entering digital environments and share meaning-making activities through interaction. The collected data from two artscience studies reveal that activities beyond cognition facilitate sensemaking. Aesthetics and embodiment in performing actions are understood to play a role in sensemaking and subsequently effect on the construction of meaning. To investigate the role of the body and aesthetics in sensemaking in digital environments, we were particularly interested in sensemaking through embodied agency and aesthetic awareness, drawing from kinesthetic awareness of performance artists. In the performative activities digital behavior recognition and human task behavior were coupled, on the one hand by performers exploring digital environments actively reflecting on their performative process, on the other hand by a performance artist and choreographer creating performative experiences for audiences. It has been demonstrated in cyber-physical settings and can be utilized in upcoming developments further integrating virtual and physical worlds.

A sensemaking approach to strategy making: The role of the leader in times of ambiguity

Leaders experience high levels of ambiguity when successive waves of rapid change transform their markets. Meetings provide leaders with the most pervasive opportunity to address the implications of ambiguity. Sensemaking conversations generate a shared understanding that helps leaders and their team pierce through this ambiguity. The sharper perspectives and renewed mindsets developed through a disciplined and sustained sensemaking dialogue bring greater strategic clarity to a leadership team. Applying the tenets of sensemaking to a dynamic strategy making framework enables leadership teams to generate and test insights and assumptions, the prerequisite to generating the marketplace understanding that will lead to effective strategies. Through a thoughtful integration of sensemaking and strategy making, leaders are better able to focus on the critical change issues, ask questions that lead to insightful conversations, and manage inquiry and advocacy so that all members of the leadership team productively contribute to the dialogue. With the thoughtful combination of these two approaches, business teams can autonomously accelerate the development of winning strategies at times of ambiguity.

Sous quelles conditions les interactions entre différents niveaux hiérarchiques au sein d’une HRO peuvent être sources de fiabilité ou au contraire peuvent perturber le processus de sensemaking et finalement la fiabilité de la prise de décision en situation CTI ?

How are decisions made in contexts where action must be taken quickly and where the slightest error can call into question the integrity of an organisation and its members? What happens, on the other hand, if actors at different hierarchical levels do not quickly converge on an understanding of the situation and on the priorities to be defined? The analysis of the Fukushima Dai Ichi nuclear power plant disaster (Japan, 2011) reveals that the use of interactions between different hierarchical levels can lead to contrasting results in terms of reliability, contrasting with the proposals of the sensemaking approach (Weick, 1993). The study details different decision processes to improve the reliability of interactions.

A Narrative Exploration of One Teacher’s Storied Experiences of Online Learning during COVID-19

The hubbub of teaching lives is enriched by the relationships between students, colleagues, parents and the larger schooling community. When these relationships are disharmonious, attending to the dissonance within these relationships may offer insight into teachers’ relational work. This autoethnographic article focuses on one international elementary school teacher’s experience of teaching online in West Africa during COVID-19. Teaching online in a developing country with political and physical instabilities compounded the chaotic experience of living and working during the pandemic. Guided by this research question, “How did online learning impact my relationship with students?”, the author utilized writing as an inquiry approach to make sense of the challenging aspects of her online teaching experiences. By delving into narrated moments, the author engaged in reflexive analysis of storied experiences. This process illuminated the meaning-making steps that she took to appreciate the nuances contained within specific moments that she had with a student and his father. Through storying and re-storying these moments, the author wondered and metaphorically wandered to unearth potential emotions, assumptions and motivations that permeated her experiences. Such an explorative focus on teachers’ subjective meaning-making process augments the wider body of work on online education and, in particular, this study’s inquiry into the complexity of educational relationships through a narrative lens offers insights into the inner workings of teacher emotions and feelings. This paper reveals how teachers may benefit from adopting a reflective and reflexive sense-making approach towards understanding their emotions, feelings, responsibilities and relationships with students and parents, especially during a time of crisis. This article contributes to the ongoing discussions about the complexities of teachers’ relational work and it enriches the extant literature on online education by shedding light on the individualistic ways that teachers cope with the uncertainties of teaching during a time of crisis. Deeping our collective understanding of how teachers cope can help us to provide better support for teachers and students during crises such as COVID-19.

Institutional context and agile team innovation: A sensemaking approach to collective knowledge creation

This study offers a phenomenological account of the institutional context's role in Agile teams' knowledge work. Drawing from 44 semi-structured interviews and naturalistic observations of Agile teams in the Telco sector, the study emphasizes sensemaking activities through which team members navigate daily situations, revealing internal mechanisms underlying knowledge management and sensemaking processes within Agile teams. The findings emphasize the value-driven character of knowledge creation and highlight distinctive modes of knowledge creation and utilization within teams. The study also uncovers the role of managers in leveraging high-level learning beyond project boundaries, illustrating the tension between teams' priorities and managers' suggested actions. Overall, we contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between Agile practices, team environment, and product innovation performance, offering valuable insights for organizations seeking to maximize innovation potential while implementing Agile methodologies.

Beyond the brink: STEM women and resourceful sensemaking after burnout

SummaryThis paper attends to the burnout recovery experiences of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and qualitatively explores how these individuals renegotiate, reorient, and recalibrate their work trajectories after burnout; an ambiguous and shocking event that has been shown to cause lingering disruption for both individuals and organizations (Salvagioni et al., 2017). We bring together conservation of resources (COR) theory and a sensemaking approach, illustrating how attention to sensemaking reveals the dynamics of resource allocation during times of disruption and loss; that is, the relational negotiation of protecting, investing, and fostering resources, including and importantly to burnout, a recognizable sense of recovery. Our rich qualitative analysis and findings reveal three sensemaking plotlines (Combative, Regenerative, and Promissory) through which rituals of resource management take place. Insights from this study provide a theoretical exposition for the post‐burnout experience, illuminating the black box between burnout and recovery. We present a number of theoretical and practical contributions in developing the scholarly vistas surrounding (post‐)burnout studies and STEM careers that better conceptualize (i) how marginalized members in highly instituted settings experience the aftermath of burnout and (ii) the broader implications this has for the sustainability of workforces.

Guidelines for interpreting the results of bibliometric analysis: A sensemaking approach

AbstractWhile bibliometric analysis is inherently quantitative and objective, it necessitates interpretation, thereby introducing an element of subjectivity. This article proposes a sensemaking approach that transitions researchers from mere description to proactive interpretation of bibliometric results, transforming raw information into informed insights. We discuss the applicability of sensemaking in bibliometric analysis and offer practical guidelines for its integration into systematic literature reviews. These guidelines revolve around a three‐stage sensemaking process—that is, scanning, sensing, and substantiating—each crucial to deriving meaningful interpretations. As such, this article serves as a valuable guide for researchers seeking to utilize bibliometric analysis as a potent analytical tool in their review studies.

Folding organizational paradoxes: Narrative practices for legitimation amid competing stakeholder demands

In paradoxical situations, organizational actors face various demands that are contradictory and interdependent at the same time. While the current literature focuses on how organizational actors respond to these paradoxical demands, it does so in a depersonalized manner with little attention to the stakeholders behind these demands. Therefore, it fails to explain how organizational actors legitimize their responses to paradox to those stakeholders who bring up the paradoxical demands. Using a narrative sensemaking approach, we study how social entrepreneurs legitimize their efforts to respond to paradoxical stakeholder demands for both delivering and measuring social impact. We find that social entrepreneurs legitimize their responses to this paradoxical situation through a narrative mechanism of folding. Through folding, narrators construct legitimizing accounts by narratively producing temporary alignments with some stakeholder interests, while opposing others. Through the recurring and consistently inconsistent use of the narrative practices of embodying and positioning, narrators produce a legitimizing account that overall portrays their responses to paradox as balanced and non-biased. As our main contribution, we offer a model of folding as a narrative, interest-based mechanism that explains how organizational actors legitimize their efforts to navigate paradoxical situations by portraying themselves as attending to paradoxical demands through a temporary and fluid shift between momentary alignments and oppositions of stakeholder interests.

Understanding user interactions and perceptions of AI risk in Singapore

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly prevalent and its application highly sophisticated. Concerns about AI's vulnerabilities and future threats have, however, long been debated among scientists and the tech community. By integrating Beck's theory of risk society with an audience-centered sense-making approach, we seek to understand the effects of AI on the general public's daily lives and their concerns when they adopt AI technology. Five focus groups with 36 participants from Singapore, a technologically advanced country, were conducted to investigate their risk perceptions of AI and AI-powered technology. We found that participants were not passive consumers of content showing up on their news feeds; indeed, some participants attempted to outsmart the algorithms. They were aware that tech companies often tweak algorithms to personalize content and drive consumers into rabbit holes. Nevertheless, despite a certain level of awareness and sporadic attempts to “outsmart” the system, many users might still be influenced by these algorithms, underscoring the extent to which consumers are often manipulated by smart tech powered by AI. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our findings by looking at the contextual factors.

Trust recovery tactics in financial services: the moderating role of service failure severity

PurposeGiven the fierce competition in financial services, service failure management and trust restoration tactics are becoming strategic priorities. Studies investigating trust restoration have increased over the years due to the significance of trust in services and the frequency of trust violations. Drawing on the sense-making and defensive approaches of attribution theory, this study aims to explore the effectiveness of various trust recovery tactics (e.g. apology, explanation, and investigation) in financial services considering the prevalence of service failure severity.Design/methodology/approachBased on a scenario-based survey, this study gathered data from 402 consumers of different banks in Pakistan. The study analyzed the data using ordinary least square regressions and structural equation modeling.FindingsThe study indicated that explanation is more effective in repairing character-competence and commitment-based trust, while investigation remained highly effective for inducing congruence-based trust. Interestingly, an apology was more effective for communication-based trust repairing, while context-based trust recovery was unaffected against all recovery tactics. Despite the prevalence of severe service failure, recovery actions proved fully effective for character-competence and commitment-based trust while partially effective for congruence-based trust recovery. This study also found that severe service failure undermines the effectiveness of recovery actions in repairing communication and context-based trust.Originality/valueThe study extends the literature on trust recovery by integrating sense-making and defensive attribution theory. The sense-making approach contributes to the existing knowledge on trust recovery by elucidating how consumers and service providers develop a shared understanding to facilitate the recovery mechanism of multidimensional trust in financial services.

Towards understanding students’ sensemaking of test case design

Context:Software testing is the most used technique for quality assurance in industry. However, in computer science education software testing is still treated as a second-class citizen and students are unable to test their software well enough. One reason for this is that teaching the subject of software testing is difficult as it is a complex intellectual activity for which students need to allocate multiple cognitive resources at the same time. A myriad of primary and secondary studies have tried to solve this problem in education, however still with very limited results. Objective:Before we can design interventions to improve our pedagogical approaches, we need to gain more in-depth understanding and recognition of sensemaking as it is happening when students design test cases. Method:An initial exploratory study identified four different sensemaking approaches used by students while creating test models. In this paper we present a follow-up study with 50 students from a large university in Spain. The used methodology was based on the previous study with the improvements that originated from its evaluation. We asked the participants to create a test model based on a description of a test problem using a specialized web-based tool for modeling test cases. We measured how well these models fit the test problem, the sensemaking process that students went through when creating the models, and the students’ perception of the modeling task. The participants received no compensation for their efforts, and we scheduled the experiment during a regular class. Apart from the created models and their metadata, we also collected recordings of the students’ computer screens made during the experiment and used a questionnaire to study their perspectives on the assignment. All the collected textual, graphical, and video data was analyzed using an iterative inductive analysis process to allow new information about the different sensemaking approaches to emerge. Results:We gained better insights into the sensemaking processes of students while modeling test cases for a problem. The results enabled us to refine our previous findings, and we identified new sensemaking approaches. Conclusions:Based on these results, we can further investigate ways to influence the sensemaking process in education, the possible misconceptions that have a negative influence on it, and the desired mental model we want our students to have to design test cases.