Sensemaking Frame Research Articles

A narrative-based exploration of aging, precariousness and housing instability among low-income older adults in Canada

ABSTRACT In this article we focus upon low-income older adults’ lived experiences of aging, precariousness and housing instability/homelessness in Hamilton, Canada. Precariousness includes involuntary or incentivized displacement, as well as ‘health discounting’ in the face of rising shelter costs, inappropriate housing, periods of homelessness and involuntary housing immobility. The lived experiences of aging, precariousness and housing instability were collected through arts-based methodologies, whereby participants were given tablets to record their photos, videos and written diaries of their housing-related experiences. Additionally, participants took part in individual semi-structured interviews and participant observation in community-based settings. The recounting of participant experiences through a sensemaking frame allows for an exploration of the question of what it means to be ‘devalued’ as one ages to the extent that securing shelter is an overwhelming and stressful journey. Participant narratives provide compelling counter stories contesting popular notions that older adults will be taken care of as they age by the state or private savings. In sharing these stories, we are attempting to bring ‘recognizability’ to the experiences of aging, precariousness and housing/homelessness in order to contribute to the conditions through which low-income older adults’ experiences can be folded into policy co-design geared towards affordable housing.

Diverging sensemaking frames during the initial phases of the COVID-19 outbreak in Denmark

The article draws on the Cynefin framework to illuminate how distinct sensemaking boundaries appeared to co-exist among the two main group of actors, health experts and political leaders, during the crucial early response phase of the COVID-19 outbreak in Denmark. The Danish government was in a chaotic sensemaking frame where major decisions needed to be made fast to avoid an impending disaster, and where scientific evidence was not pivotal to the decision-making process. The leading health authorities, on the other hand, appeared to be in a complicated sensemaking frame where evidence-based decision-making was still the modus operandum, and where policy recommendations were continuously reassessed in light of new scientific data. These two sensemaking frames clashed both publicly and internally, exposing a lack of understanding and communication across different sensemaking frames. Based on the analysis, we recommend two overarching initiatives to bridge contradictory sensemaking boundaries in times of major crises: (i) training in identifying and acknowledging different sensemaking frames; (ii) communication strategies that are sensitive to the sensemaking frames of other actors in the decision-making process.

Like the layers of an onion: curricular noticing as a lens to understand the epistemological features of the Philippine K to 12 secondary mathematics curriculum materials

As major sources of information, curriculum materials (CMs) have generally served teachers and students by providing instructional and learning support. The impact of CMs on teachers’ pedagogical practice and learners’ engagement and success had been fairly documented. However, just as the use of CMs is influenced by teachers’ orientations and learners’ identity with the subject matter, the same can be said for textbook writers who attend, interpret and respond to curriculum content and standards. Guided by Dietiker, Males, Amador and Earnest (2018)’s curriculum noticing construct, this study examined the epistemological features of Philippine secondary school mathematics textbooks of the Department of Education. Four textbooks, one from each grade level, were analyzed via a directed qualitative content analysis. Following the inductive approach, significant statements from the texts were culled and organized through coding, categorizing and abstraction using a repertory grid. Member checking was done to validate the findings of the study. Interestingly, the study afforded the development of the Onion Model of Curricular Noticing Dynamics in Mathematics Textbooks. The model reveals how CM writers frame the mathematics curriculum in the design and development of textbooks. Specifically, the encountering frame lays emphasis on their interaction with the mandated curriculum through an examination of curricular elements. In the sense-making frame, writers reflect on four curricular questions leading to an understanding of the curriculum and the context in which it operates. Finally, the operationalizing frame captures the unique moves observed by textbook writers in developing the materials. The emerged model can serve as a valuable means in achieving heightened consciousness among textbook writers as they develop materials that promote teacher learning and respond to learners’ needs, interests and orientations.

Sensemaking of Military Leaders in Combat and Its Aftermath: A Phenomenological Inquiry

This paper describes the sensemaking processes engaged in by leaders during close combat and its aftermath. The data were collected by interviewing ten commanders who took part in two different combat events. The phenome­nological method revealed cognitive, emotional, and social processes, which are the focus of sensemaking in close combat. We also found that sensemak­ing was performed both during and after combat. In combat, commanders’ sensemaking was focused on understanding the tactical problem, the typical micro-social processes of combat, and the emotional needs of their subordi­nates. After combat, sensemaking continued with framing professional deci­sions and knowledge, preserving unit cohesion and prestige, and mentoring subordinates. High-ranking officers had a broader sensemaking frame, which included political issues, while junior officers were focused on their immediate unit. We suggest that a broader framework of sensemaking may serve the leadership development of military leaders.

When hierarchy becomes collaborative

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to expand understandings of interorganizational collaboration among high reliability organizations (HROs). It proposes that HROs face unique needs for relationship building, pre-planning, and retrospective sensemaking that do not fit within prior models of collaboration. For HROs, definitions of collaboration vary contextually based on needs that arise during emergency situations. HROs have a need for both hierarchical structure and collaborative processes and use collaboration as a sensemaking frame that allows practitioners to attend to both needs.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses a case study from an ongoing ethnographic study of an emergency response collaboration. The paper uses open-ended interviews about collaboration with all key members of the incident response hierarchy, and participant observation of collaboration before, during and after a key emergency incident.FindingsThe paper proposes a new framework for HRO collaboration: that collaboration is a sensemaking frame for HROs used to make sense of individual actions, that HRO collaboration is more complex during pre-planning and focused on individual decision making during incidents, and that members can communicatively make sense of the need for hierarchy and collaborative action by defining these needs contextually.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper uses an in-depth case study of an incident to explore this collaborative framework; therefore, researchers are encouraged to test this framework in additional high reliability collaborative contexts.Practical implicationsThe paper includes implications for best communicative practices to recognize the need to be both hierarchical and flexible in high reliability organizing.Originality/valueThis paper fulfills a need to expand collaboration literature beyond idealized and egalitarian definitions, in order to understand how practitioners use communication to understand their actions as collaborative, especially in organizations that also require hierarchy and individual actions. This case study suggests that collaboration as a sensemaking frame creates collaborative advantages for HROs, but can also limit sensemaking about incident management.

The culturally contingent meaning of entrepreneurship: mixed embeddedness and co-ethnic ties

This study employs phenomenography to investigate the role of embeddedness in business venturing of migrant and ethnic entrepreneurs. By focusing on two culturally distinct groups, operating in the same micro-economic context, we show the ways in which embeddedness impacts the perceptions and subsequent enactment of business venturing. Our findings demonstrate that, despite physical proximity and similar socio-economic context, the investigated communities predominantly employ their co-ethnic norms, assumptions and frames of reference to makes sense of and act upon entrepreneurial opportunities. These findings expand the mixed embeddedness literature by exploring how co-ethnic sensemaking frames persist within culturally distinct communities, despite years of co-existence within the same socio-economic context. Moreover, our study reveals how co-ethnic structures can successfully substitute institutional arrangements traditionally provided by the host-country environment. By reflecting upon the practice of entrepreneuring and entrepreneurial sensemaking, our findings point towards the importance of language and interpretative methods for theory development.

Perceptions of Student Identities and Institutional Practices of Intersectional Programming

Student affairs professionals have become engaged in inclusive practices and student success efforts in relation to students' racial, ethnic, gender, and/or class identities. Yet, many educators struggle to connect these important insights to the multidimensional identities of students and their success in higher education. This study examined student affairs professionals' existing knowledge, values, and practices related to their students' discrete and intersectional identities. Implications for practice are discussed using a sense-making frame to consider increasing the capacity of the higher education community to apply current research and best practices to develop programming—for the success of all students.

Employee Sensemaking on the Importance of Sustainability Reporting in Sustainability Identity Change

AbstractThis study examines employee sensemaking processes in order to understand the role of sustainability reporting in organizational identity change. Through an analysis of 52 interviews with employees in two Finnish companies, we develop sensemaking frames for understanding the role of sustainability reporting in organizational identity change. The three sensemaking frames are individualistic, relational and decoupled. Each of these sensemaking frames differs in stakeholder orientation. They indicate that sensemaking influences the interpretation of how important sustainability reporting is for organizational identity change towards sustainability. The study shows how the individualistic and relational frames serve as sensemaking frames for framing sustainability reporting as being possibly beneficial in organizational identity change. However, the decoupled frame highlights the deficiencies of reporting, especially from the perspective of a collectivistic stakeholder orientation. We propose that a better understanding of the decoupled sensemaking frame helps to understand the justifications for the increasing criticism that has been targeted at sustainability reporting. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Institutions as resource context

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of institutions and institutional complexity in the process through which resources-in-context get their “resourceness.”Design/methodology/approach– To shed light on the process of potential resources gaining their “resourceness,” the authors draw from two streams of literature: the service ecosystems perspective and institutional theory.Findings– The authors combine the process of resources “becoming” with the concept of institutions and conceptualize institutional arrangements, and the unique sets of practices, symbols and organizing principles they carry, as the sense-making frames of the “resourceness” of potential resources. In service ecosystems, numerous partially conflicting institutional arrangements co-exit and provide actors with alternative frames of sense-making and action, enabling the emergence of new instances of “resourceness”.Research limitations/implications– The paper suggests that “resourceness” is inseparable from the complex institutional context in which it arises. This conceptualization reveals the need for more holistic, systemic and multidisciplinary perspectives on understanding the implications of the process of resources “becoming” on value co creation, innovation and market formation.Practical implications– As the “resourceness” of potential resources arises due to the influence of institutions, managers need a more profound understanding of the complimentary and inhibiting institutional arrangements and the related practices, symbols and organizing principles that comprise the multidimensional context in which they operate.Originality/value– This paper is one of the first to focus specifically on the process of resources “becoming,” using a systemic and institutional perspective to grasp the complexity of the phenomenon.

HIV positive men as fathers: Accounts of displacement, ir/responsibility and paternal emergence.

It is now apparent that socio-cultural constructions of masculinity variously impact men's experiences of their HIV positive status, yet how being a father can feature in this mix remains under-researched. This study employed in-depth semi-structured interviews and Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis to explore the accounts of six self-identifying heterosexual fathers (four Black African migrants, two White European) who had been living with HIV from 5 to 24 years. While the HIV-related literature calls for the need to subvert 'traditional' expressions of masculinity as a means of promoting HIV prevention and HIV health, we argue that the lived experience for HIV positive men as fathers is more socially, discursively and thus more psychologically nuanced. We illustrate this by highlighting ways in which HIV positive men as fathers are not simply making sense of themselves as a HIV positive man for whom the modern (new) man and father positions are useful strategies for adapting to HIV and combating associated stigma. Discourses of modern and patriarchal fatherhoods, a gender-specific discourse of irresponsibility and the neoliberal conflation of heath and self-responsibility are also at work in the sense-making frames that HIV positive men, who are also fathers, can variously deploy. Our analysis shows how this discursive mix can underpin possibilities of often conflicted meaning and identity when living as a man and father with HIV in the United Kingdom, and specifically how discourses of fatherhood and HIV 'positive' health can complicate these men's expressions and inhabitations of masculinity.

Police and Military as Good Strangers

The objective of this project was to understand why and how some police officers and military personnel are more effective than others at managing civilian encounters without creating hostility – ‘Good Strangers’ (GSs). We conducted cognitive task analysis (CTA) interviews with 17 US police officers and 24 US warfighters (Marines and Army soldiers). The interviews yielded a total of 38 incidents (17 police and 21 military), which we used to identify critical skills for functioning as GSs. These skills centred on having a sensemaking frame that established a professional identity as a GS – Someone who seeks opportunities to increase civilian trust in police/military. This frame requires skills in gaining voluntary compliance, building rapport, trading off security and other frames versus trust building, and taking the perspective of civilians.Practitioner points To work effectively with civilians, police and military personnel need to use a Good Stranger frame, which casts each encounter as an opportunity to build trust. This GS frame requires skills such as trading off security to be seen as trustworthy, perspective taking, gaining rapport, gaining voluntary compliance rather than coercive compliance, and de‐escalating tense situations. The GS frame may be surprisingly easy to acquire for some police and military; observation of role models and their effectiveness seems to be a powerful training opportunity. Other training leverage points involve peer pressure, becoming more effective at gaining civilian cooperation, and recognizing the problems created by failing to build trust.

Talking About Race Without Talking About Race

“Race” is a human invention that is deeply institutionalized within society as racial practices and understandings shaping how people interact and perceive reality. By changing how it is approached and discussed “race” as an ideology is adept at transforming and adapting to societal shifts and resistance without significantly altering its basic structures. The ideology of color blindness represents a new “race” alteration. This study evaluates how color blindness as a normative sensemaking frame operates as a rhetorical mask that obscures researchers’ racial thinking in genomics. Drawing on 20 open-ended primary interviews with genomicists from various subfields, the article demonstrates that it is impossible to comprehend the persistence of racial thinking in genomics without considering how color-blind racial definitions and engagements mediate genomicists’ understanding of genomics.

Students’ sense-making frames in mathematics lectures

The goal of this study is to describe the various ways students make sense of mathematics lectures. Here, sense-making refers to a process by which people construct personal meanings for phenomena they experience. This study introduces the idea of a sense-making frame and describes three different types of frames: content-, communication-, and situating-oriented. We found that students in an abstract algebra class regularly engaged in sense-making during lectures on equivalence relations, and this sense-making influenced their note-taking practices. We discuss the relationship between the choice of frame, the students’ sense-making practices, and the potential missed opportunities for learning from the lecture. These results show the importance of understanding the ways students make sense of aspects of mathematics lectures and how their sense-making practices influence what they might learn from the lecture.

Knowledge creation through co-entrepreneurship

This study examines the role that social capital plays when partners collectively develop new knowledge to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. Qualitative data were collected and enabled a deep exploration of the structural, cognitive and relational dimensions of social capital. Findings show that the structural dimension helps initiate partnerships, gain access to important markets and build capabilities within partnerships. The cognitive dimension involved partners unfreezing the sense-making frames of the parent company and co-constructing a new interpretive framework, specific to the partnership, with the alliance partner. Relational aspects of trust through professional competency, open communication and personal integrity were critical for close relationships to be formed in order that ideas could be integrated and developed. Thus, we argue that co-entrepreneurship is a process whereby both partners contribute to value creation through their ability to transcend differences and 'negotiate space' in order to 'learn how to learn' for knowledge creation.