Sensemaking Approach Research Articles

Unanticipated Change in Organisational Leadership: An Employees’ Perspective in Australian SMEs

This study uses phenomenography as a qualitative methodology within a sensemaking approach to investigate how employees experience unanticipated organisational leadership change in small firms, and it is applied in an empirical study of change management in Australian Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). In-depth interviews of 24 employees across 8 different Australian SMEs elicited employees’ varied experiences and aspects of unanticipated leadership change such as transparency, supportive communication, affective responses and self-identity. In particular, the findings reveal common affective reactions and experiences but four different ways in which employees experience unanticipated leadership change. Based on our findings, implications and future direction for research are discussed.

Ethics as a Fabric: An Emotional Reflexive Sensemaking Process

ABSTRACT:The ethical sensemaking approach stands as an essential alternative to the dominant rational and objectivist paradigm of ethical decision-making in organizations. From this perspective, this research explores the intrapersonal interplay of emotions and reflexivity in ethical sensemaking. We analyzed thirty-seven semi-structured interviews conducted with executive coaches sharing a critical incident about an issue they framed as ethical. Our findings show that their ethical decisions unfolded over a three-phase emotional reflexive sensemaking process, where reflexivity allowed for the management of emotions in the form of emotional awareness, emotional unpacking, and emotional (dis)engagement. Therefore, we portray ethics as afabric, produced through the knitting of emotions and reflexivity. And, while ethics certainly appear to be produced by the subject, we suggest a reciprocal relationship, whereby the very fabric of ethics contributes to the production of the ethical subject.

A service design approach to healthcare innovation: from decision-making to sense-making and institutional change

Healthcare is facing complex challenges that demand profound service system innovation. Service design offers an opportunity to move beyond explanatory research and take an action-oriented approach that combines research rigor with relevance to foster innovation in healthcare. We present three research projects that illustrate different ways service design can enable health service system innovation to create uplifting changes in wellbeing. The first research project utilizes a decision-making approach to support design teams in developing value co-creating technology-enabled services for skin cancer prevention. The second project employs a sense-making approach through participatory design to develop a National Electronic Health Record that addresses the multiple and conflicting goals of healthcare network actors. The third project uses an institutional change approach to develop a new digital service for youth with mental health issues while simultaneously shifting the culture of the clinic toward people-centered care through participatory service design. We conclude with research directions to leverage the potential of service design for healthcare innovation, including strengthening the dialogue between explanatory and design research, exploring new multidisciplinary collaborations and integrating multiple research methods.

Development and Application of a Sensemaking Approach to Community-based Disaster Risk Governance

Development and Application of a Sensemaking Approach to Community-based Disaster Risk Governance

Audience-Centric Engagement, Collaboration Culture and Platform Counterbalancing: A Longitudinal Study of Ongoing Sensemaking of Emerging Technologies

Digital journalism studies have done little in terms of studying longitudinally the interrelationships between emerging technology and convergent news practices. This study addresses that void by using a sensemaking approach to examine how emerging technology was appropriated and enacted in the convergent news activities of newsworkers, and how they made sense of the emerging technologies over two and a half years. Our study analyzes two newsrooms in Singapore: 1) a digital-first legacy newspaper, and 2) an independent digital-only news startup. This article employs the Infotendencias Group’s (2012) analytical framework and its four dimensions of news convergence: i) business, ii) professional, iii) technological, and iv) contents. Additionally, it proposes and employs a fifth dimension: v) audience-centric engagement. The fifth dimension is based on the concept of “measurable journalism” (Carlson, 2018), analyzing how its actors influence the relationship between newsrooms and their audiences. This study builds on two rounds of in-depth interviews conducted from end-2015 to mid-2016, and again in 2018. Our findings show that audience-centric-engagement practices are observed in all four dimensions of convergent news activities of each news organization, and leads to three main conclusions: 1) the growing significance of <em>audience-centric engagement</em>, 2) an emergence of a <em>collaboration culture</em>, and 3) the salience of <em>platform counterbalancing</em>.

Making sense of blockchain technology: How will it transform supply chains?

This research uses sensemaking theory to explore how emerging blockchain technology may transform supply chains. We investigate three research questions (RQs): What are blockchain technology's perceived benefits to supply chains, where are disruptions mostly likely to occur and what are the potential challenges to further blockchain diffusion? We conducted in-depth interviews with 14 supply chain experts. Cognitive mapping and narrative analysis were deployed as the two main data analysis techniques to aid our understanding and evaluation of people's cognitive complexity in making sense of blockchain technology. We found that individual experts developed different cognitive structures within their own sensemaking processes. After merging individual cognitive maps into a strategic map, we identified several themes and central concepts that then allowed us to explore potential answers to the three RQs. Our study is among the very few to date to explicitly explore how blockchains may transform supply chain practices. Using the sensemaking approach afforded a deeper understanding of how senior executives diagnose the symptoms evident from blockchains and develop assumptions, expectations and knowledge of the technology, which will then shape their future actions regarding its utilisation. We demonstrate the usefulness of sensemaking theory as an alternative lens in investigating contemporary supply chain phenomena such as blockchains. Bringing sensemaking theory to this discipline in particular enriches emerging behavioural operations research. Our contributions also lie in extending the theories of prospective sensemaking and adding further insights to the stream of technology adoption studies.

Decision-making in complex environments under time pressure and risk of critical irreversibility: The role of meta rules

In complex situations with risks of critical irreversibility, decision-makers must be able to take action quickly but also appropriately, especially in response to unexpected events. In these situations, “the first error in the trial-and-error-learning will also be the last trial” (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2011: 20). This paper assesses the contribution of the meta rule concept, defined as the conditions to respect to maintain the integrity of the organization in an unexpected situation. Our design tests the relevance of two conceptual approaches: high reliability organizations (HRO) and sensemaking approaches. The main proposal of this research is to highlight that, for a decision-maker, understanding a situation through meta rules at key times limits the risk of information overload by facilitating an overall understanding of the situation. It becomes possible to make decisions quickly, if necessary, using new robust and reliable strategies. Using a quantitative study of the behaviors of a warship bridge team composed of cadets in the French Naval Academy, the authors tested various situations that young officers have to manage. The results highlighted that meta rules play a positive mediating effect between rules and reliability and between interactions and reliability. With the use of meta rules, the overall reliability level is higher when employing an HRO approach than when using a sensemaking approach.

Performance Feedback and Corporate Social Responsibility

Grounded on the behavioral theory of the firm, this study attempts to extend the present understanding of antecedents of corporate social responsibility (CSR) with behavioral lens. We demarcate CSR into internal versus external CSR and argue that performance feedback adjusts levels of risk taking and triggers different types of CSR activities. A panel data set of 112 listed companies in Sri Lanka for a five years period is used to test the hypotheses. Findings suggest that outperforming feedback triggers internal CSR as an internal sense-making approach while underperforming feedback triggers external CSR as an instrument for turning the poor performance. These relationships are moderated by market competition and organizational slack.

No manager is an island: culture in sensemaking of business networking

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the role of culture in managerial sensemaking and conceptualization of business networking.Design/methodology/approachThe authors apply qualitative methodology through the sensemaking approach on three Finnish and three Russian managers in mutual buyer–supplier business relationship dyads.FindingsThe results imply that the cultural background of the manager determines his perception of the level at which business networking occurs. Finnish managers conceptualize business networking as an organizational strategy, whereas their Russian counterparts conceptualize the phenomenon squarely at the individual level.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors suggest that the underlying cause of the differences in the conceptualization of networking may be that Finnish business networking relies more on concepts derived from Western European business culture, whereas Russian networking relies more on the traditional culture. Consequently, they suggest that the concept of business networking in extant research may suffer from ethnocentricity. Limitations of the study include the limited extent of generalizations from its qualitative nature.Practical implicationsThe results imply that business network relationships should be managed differently in different cultures, and that depending on the cultural background of the business partner, managing both the organizational and the individual levels of business networking is needed.Originality/valueThe study contributes to limited literature on culture and the role of individuals in managerial conceptualization of business networking. This is one of the rare studies to illustrate differences through individual sensemaking on both sides of the relationship dyad and account for both Western European and Russian market environments.

Why it takes an ‘ontological shock’ to prompt increases in small firm resilience: Sensemaking, emotions and flood risk

This article uses a sensemaking approach to understand small firms’ responses to the threat of external shocks. By analysing semi-structured interviews with owners of flooded small firms, we investigate how owners process flood experiences and explore why such experiences do not consistently lead to the resilient adaptation of premises. We, conclude that some of the explanation for low levels of adaptation relates to a desire to defend existing sensemaking structures and associated identities. Sensemaking structures are only revised if these structures are not critical to business identity, or if a flood constitutes an ‘ontological shock’ and renders untenable existing assumptions regarding long-term business continuity. This article has implications for adaptation to the growing risk of flooding, climate change and external shocks. Future research analysing external shocks would benefit from using a sensemaking approach and survey studies should include measurements of ‘ontological’ impact as well as material and financial damage. In addition, those designing information campaigns should take account of small firms’ resistance to information that threatens their existing sensemaking structures and social identities.

Emergent coopetition from a sensemaking perspective: A multi-level analysis

This article considers the development of coopetitive sensemaking across multiple levels of analysis, which include individual (micro), organizational/inter-organizational (meso), and network/ecosystem (macro). Using a sensemaking approach, a series of proposed phases are posited in a processual model using teleological assumptions of time to expose coopetition as an emergent concept. With a coopetitive mindset as an important focus at the individual level of analysis, the processual model inculcates notions of competitive uncertainty, being born coopetitive, coopetitive exploration, exploitation, and a coopetitive uncertainty phase. Using different pathways through these phases, sensemaking modes are proposed, which include network and ecosystem sensitivity. The central contribution of the article is to expose the interplay of sensemaking across multiple levels of analysis and across teleological phases.

Change agents and sustainable supply chain collaboration: A longitudinal study in the Dutch pig farming sector from a sensemaking perspective

Academic research on sustainability issues in supply chain collaboration has recently begun to focus more on a network-oriented view. Both horizontal and vertical relationships are being explored, which has led to recognition of the significance of the active participation of change agents in this process. This paper provides a practical example of how change agents shifted an entire chain (pig farming) towards sustainability over 17 years. The longitudinal study examined the mechanics of how change agents in a chain successfully engage others on sustainability issues. A sensemaking approach was used that focussed on three aspects: communication, action, and building relationships. The findings show that the change agents worked on different levels of supply chain collaboration in response to the evolution of the sustainability initiative. Their focus moved from producers controlling the entire chain to engaging in partnerships with other contributors both inside and outside the chain. They translated the abstract concept of sustainability into language understandable for the potential partners, fostering transparency, joined an eco-label certification program, and later invested in experiments to find solutions to new ideas as they arose through reflection. This stepwise construction of a netchain reveals the evolution of reciprocal interdependence in an informal, personal and trust-based way between organizations which can be applied to sustainability initiatives in other fields.

Strategic resources: A sensemaking approach

Extant research drawing on the resource-based and dynamic capabilities views has tended to overlook how managers and other strategists relate to resources and capabilities by which firms vie for sustainable competitive advantage. Studies of how managers make sense of strategic capabilities and resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable are underdeveloped. The present paper addresses this void and aims to develop an empirically grounded model of strategists’ conception of resources and capabilities. We make a processual longitudinal analysis of the discourse of a Swedish expatriate network in China whose aim is to help its members resolving complex strategic problems. The results are discussed in light of the current debate on the future of the resource-based view and the limits of the dynamic capabilities view.

Toward a unified model of human information behavior: an equilibrium perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to build a unified model of human information behavior (HIB) for integrating classical constructs and reformulating the structure of HIB theory.Design/methodology/approachThis paper employs equilibrium perspective from partial equilibrium theory to conceptualization and deduction, starting from four basic assumptions.FindingsThis paper develops two models to incorporate previous HIB research approaches into an equilibrium-analysis-oriented information supply-demand (ISD) framework: first, the immediate-task/problem-based and everyday life information-seeking (ELIS)-sense-making approaches are incorporated into the short-term ISD model; second, the knowledge-construction-oriented and ability-based HIB research approaches are elaborated by the long-term ISD model. Relations among HIB theories are illustrated via the method of graphical reasoning. Moreover, these two models jointly reveal the connection between information seeking in immediate problematic situations and long-term ability improvement.Originality/valueThe equilibrium framework enables future research to explore HIB from three perspectives: stages: group the classical concepts (e.g. anomalous state of knowledge, uncertainty) into different stages (i.e. start state, process, goal state) and see how they interact with each other within and across different stages; forces: explore information behaviors and information-related abilities as information supply and demand forces, and see how different forces influence each other and jointly motivate people to pursue the equilibriums between outside world and mental model; and short term and long term: study the connections between short-term information seeking and long-term ability improvement at both theoretical and empirical levels.

Communicating with stakeholders when bad news is uncertain

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the question of if and when leaders should communicate bad news to their stakeholders. Previous research in the crisis communication literature has highlighted the need to communicate quickly and persuasively to minimize losses; however, the authors argue that such tactics assume certainty in negative outcomes and tend to generate predominantly one-way, company-centric communication. In this paper, the authors propose that under conditions of uncertainty (i.e. when the bad news has an unknown outcome or cause) different communication strategies are needed.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the stakeholder theory, the authors argue that organizational decision makers have a clear moral obligation to share bad news with affected stakeholders. The authors then review the existing approach to crisis communication and discuss its limitations under conditions of uncertainty. Finally, the authors develop a set of scenarios to guide the communication of bad news under conditions of uncertainty.FindingsThe authors formulate a framework to guide leaders on how to communicate with stakeholders when the nature of the bad news is uncertain and open to multiple interpretations. The authors propose a situational approach for responding to stakeholders that emerges from the context of the bad news.Originality/valueThe authors propose a situational framework for communicating bad news that overcomes the current limitations of extant crisis communication strategies under conditions of uncertainty. This involves balancing existing crisis communication recommendations with a more collaborative sensemaking approach.

A sense-making approach to motivational interviewing

A sense-making approach to motivational interviewing

A new argument using embeddedness and sensemaking to explain small firms' responses to employment regulation

AbstractIn this essay, we develop a new argument about how the concept of embeddedness and a sensemaking approach can be used to theorise small firms' regulatory responses, especially to employment regulation. We want to move beyond the simplistic and narrow conceptualisations of resistant action in small firms in response to regulation. We contribute to theorising on small firms' regulatory responses by developing an embedded account of social action that takes us beyond the dichotomy of individualised (micro) and institutional accounts (macro) explanations of firm behaviour. Our argument emphasises the situatedness of small firm behaviour shaped by, and in turn shaping, the contexts in which they are embedded. We go beyond stereotypes to give a nuanced account of situated action. In conclusion, we briefly outline how our ideas can be operationalised to explain small firms' diverse responses to regulation.

Exploring the relation between teachers’ perceptions of workplace conditions and their professional learning goals

Schools’ structural workplace conditions (e.g. learning resources and professional development policies) and cultural workplace conditions (e.g. school leadership, teachers’ collaborative culture) have been found to affect the way teachers learn. It is not so much the objective conditions that support or impede professional learning but the way teachers perceive those workplace conditions that influence teachers’ learning. Not much is known, however, about how teachers’ perceptions relate to the way they direct their own learning. Using a sense-making approach, we explored how four teachers’ perceptions of cultural and structural workplace conditions were related with how they direct their own learning. The four cases were selected from a sample of 31 teachers from two secondary schools, and differed in the extent to which the teachers perceived their workplace as enabling or constraining their learning. We found that the content of teachers’ learning goals is related to their perception of shared vision and professional dialogue in their schools, and driven by individual classroom-based concerns. Furthermore, teachers’ perceptions of cultural workplace conditions and supportive leadership practices seem to be more important influences for teachers’ self-directed learning than their perception of structural conditions.

Information Practices of Young People at a Public Library Makerspace – A Sense-Making Approach

The purpose of this research was to understand how young people interact with information at a public library makerspace as well as the opportunities and challenges emerged in their participation. Dervin’s Sense-Making theory and methodology were employed in framing the research questions, data collection and analysis. Findings highlighted the informal learning opportunities of a makerspace, challenges that occurred during the making phase, information and help seeking from iterative trial and error as well as interpersonal resources. Implications for information professionals at public library makerspaces are discussed. Le but de cette recherche était de comprendre comment les jeunes interagissent avec l’information dans une bibliothèque publique équipée d’un atelier partagé, ainsi que les opportunités et les défis ayant émergé au cours de leur participation. La théorie et la méthodologie du sense-making de Dervin a été utilisée dans la formulation des questions de recherche, la collecte et l'analyse des données. Les résultats ont mis en évidence les opportunités d’apprentissage informel de l’atelier partagé; les défis ayant surgi lors de l’utilisation de l’atelier; les recherches d’information et d’aide apparues lors des phases d’essais et erreurs itératifs ainsi que des ressources interpersonnelles. Nous discutons les implications des ateliers partagés en bibliotjèques publiques pour les professionnels de l'information.

Employees’ emotions in change: advancing the sensemaking approach

PurposeOrganizational changes are emotionally charged processes, and scholarly research has increasingly emphasized the impact of employee emotions on successful change management. This impact has rarely been considered in light of approaches focussing on employee sensemaking. To address this critical gap, the purpose of this paper is to combine the model of enacted sensemaking with insights from the Affect Infusion Model.Design/methodology/approachTo test the model, the authors surveyed 261 employees with a vignette study and performed structural equation modeling on the results.FindingsThe findings reveal that emotions significantly affect employees’ level of psychological resources, particularly change commitment, efficacy, and expectations. Furthermore, change commitment and efficacy are significant predictors of resistance intention, which confirms (to an extent) the validity of enacted sensemaking, and these factors mediate the relationship between employees’ emotions and their resistance intentions.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focussed on the early stages of a change initiative. Therefore, the authors only considered employee assessment at one point in time.Practical implicationsThis model has managerial utility for explaining how employees’ resistance intention regarding change is influenced by employees’ emotions and their psychological resources.Originality/valueThe results broaden the horizons because they suggest a model of “emotionally primed” enacted sensemaking for employees during organizational change by offering a new theoretical framework (enacted sensemaking and substantive processing) and a new methodological approach (quantitative vignette study).