Sense-making Theory Research Articles

Micro-Process of Open Innovation in Megaprojects Under Sense-Making Perspective

Compared with traditional closed innovation, open innovation brings more new ideas, technologies, and resources to megaprojects, which is becoming increasingly important in the face of growing complexity and sustainability. Drawing on the application of sense-making theory in organizational change, this study conducts an empirical case study to explore how open innovation is carried out in megaprojects, as well as how to explain the processes at the micro level. The Changchun Metropolitan Circle Ring Expressway phase II project was selected as the analytical case and grounded coding technology was adopted to analyze the realization process of open innovation. The results revealed that managers as organizers first completed their own sense making and then influenced others’ sense making via sense giving to unify understanding and complete innovation mode transformation. Moreover, managers need to adjust sense making for themselves and sense giving for others according to interactive feedback. This study illustrated that open innovation strategies need to enact some new relevant routines in order for a cognitive reorientation to take place. A multi-level and multi-dimensional micro-mechanism and process was proposed to guide open innovation behavior in megaprojects.

An ambiguous aspiration: school actors making sense of educational innovation policy

ABSTRACT Educational innovation has received significant attention in contemporary policy debates. Many countries and regions have initiated comprehensive reforms to reshape teaching methods and link innovative practices with improved equity and performance outcomes. In Catalonia (Spain), a clear example of this phenomenon, recent policy developments have pressured schools and teachers to introduce innovative teaching practices to enhance the overall quality of the educational system. Yet, the conceptual framework of school innovation in this context is broad and ambiguous. Therefore, the Catalan case offers a rich context to explore how educational innovation policy is interpreted and enacted in schools. This study uses enactment and sensemaking theories, considering material, symbolic, and cognitive factors that explain variations in practices across schools. The study employs a qualitative approach to examine teachers’ and principals’ interpretations of the innovation policy and to analyse innovation practices. The findings show that the broad and ambiguous nature of the innovation policy mandate allows for wide interpretation, adaptation, and enactment, highly dependent on school actors’ understandings of innovation and contextual factors. Additionally, schools often engage in innovation at a superficial level, with externally driven, fragmented, and standardized innovation practices being most frequent, although this varies across schools’ socioeconomic levels.

“Baba, you’re not gonna live forever … . we need these stories”: Intergenerational storytelling in Palestinian families connecting history, identity, and (the loss of) place

ABSTRACT The current study integrates communicated narrative sense-making (CNSM) theory with the ecological systems model to investigate intergenerational family storytelling (IGFS) in Palestinian families. Amidst historical and ongoing persecution, members of the Palestinian diaspora are tasked with making sense of their cultural and familial experiences. This study aims to understand how IGFS affects members’ meanings, values, and beliefs related to their Palestinian identity. Interviews with 25 Palestinians in the U.S. revealed that their IGFS was unified under “sumud” – a Palestinian concept highlighting steadfastness across generations. Sumud was illuminated through themes of shaping identity and connecting through generations. Findings contribute to CNSM theory by illuminating the unique functions of IGFS and can inform culturally sensitive interventions for communities facing intergenerational trauma and adversity.

“Living the stories of your great-grandmother”: Making sense of Russia’s war in Ukraine through Polish intergenerational family storytelling

ABSTRACT After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Polish people were tasked with making sense of war in close proximity while supporting millions of Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Poland. In times of distress, such as war and refugee crises, intergenerational storytelling helps people make sense of their experience. Interviews with 28 Polish adults during the first five months of the war revealed that intergenerational family storytelling prompted them to: cope with war, connect with Ukraine, and help others. These narrative functions were informed by various levels of culture, as proposed by ecological systems theorizing. Findings expand communication narrative sense-making theory by accounting for sociohistorical influences in intergenerational family storytelling and highlighting how family storytelling can motivate action during crisis.

The Sustainability of Curriculum Reform and Implementation Through Teacher Participation: Evidence from Social Studies Teachers

Globally, there is a movement toward curriculum development and reform as states, governments, and education departments work to provide future-focused curricula to address the demands and difficulties of the 21st century. Despite public knowledge that curriculum reform and implementation are universal trends infested with intractable challenges, little is understood about why the participation of teachers in reform activities from design through implementation should be considered essential. This paper, a part of earlier work, reports on a qualitative case study examining how teachers made sense of their participation in curriculum reform and implementation activities. Twelve teachers representing six primary schools in Zimbabwe were interviewed in Focus Group Discussions and semi-structured interviews to gather data. Using the sense-making theory as a lens, thematic analysis of qualitative data suggests that teacher participation in curriculum reforms enables teachers to be co-designers, which in turn improves ownership of the innovations, leading to an improved implementation fidelity of the new curriculum as teachers are provided with the authority to go through the implementation process with a comparable level of rigor as policymakers. These insights could inform curriculum design and development policy, potentially improving curriculum implementation worldwide. The study implores policymakers to rope in teachers as potent fountains of curriculum content and as partners in curriculum design and development. The study contributes to scholarship on policy formulation and implementation in educational settings.

Making Sense of Cyberbullying: Stories of Men and Women at Work

This article explores how women and men appraise and interpret their experiences of cyberbullying at work and how they respond to such behaviours within a gendered cultural space, using the theory of sensemaking. Within the interpretive research paradigm, data was collected through in-depth, in-person interviews from 10 male and 25 female employees who had experienced cyberbullying. The findings indicated the similar and different ways that sense was made by men and women employees about their cyberbullying experiences. While making sense of cyberbullying experiences has been a very social endeavour for women, it has been a relatively private and individual process for men. Further, women had been more assertive and had relentlessly attempted to clear their image and regain their fractured identities as respectable women, while men mainly had been passive in trying to protect their fractured identities as good performers. Further, gender role stereotypes and gender scripts appeared to have influenced the sensemaking process and the participants’ reactions. This article contributes to the limited literature on cyberbullying at work and develops existing understandings of how men and women understand and react to cyberbullying experiences in a gendered cultural context.

Empirical Evidence from Nigeria on Environmental Health and Occupational Safety at Work

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has developed numerous conventions, protocols, and recommendations on minimum labour standards, with the majority relating to occupational safety and health systems (OSH). However, environmental issues like deforestation, desertification, flooding, erosion, oil spills, and air and water pollution, particularly in Nigeria, pose a threat to the health and safety of the many organizations in developing nations. Using a hybrid of research designs such as survey and content analysis and based on the Risk Society Theory and Sense-making Theory, this paper reviews, environmental health and occupational safety at workplaces in Nigeria. This study aims to identify environmental health and occupational safety issues in Nigeria's manufacturing sector, specifically in the iron and steel and aluminium industry, by examining inaccurate data on male and female workers. Using in-depth interviews with a total of 17 participants, the primary data was gathered from managers and senior staff members of chosen firms in Ajaokuta, Kogi State, and Lagos State, Nigeria. These were Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited (ASCL) and Alumaco Aluminium Manufacturing Co. of Nigeria Ltd., Ikeja, Nigeria. It discovers a high level of occupational health awareness, insufficient funding for safety intelligence initiatives, and a high frequency of workplace dangers. The study also finds that Nigeria was among the signatories in Africa who failed to comply with this directive. It recommends promoting occupational health services, training doctors to recognize work-related diseases, and complying with the ILO's Convention 155. The article also suggests updating laws, conducting education campaigns, investing in training, and holding employers accountable for non-compliance

Making end-of-life health disparities in the U.S. visible through family bereavement narratives

ObjectiveEnd-of-life experiences can have important implications for the meaning-making and communication of bereaved family members, particularly due to (in)access to formal healthcare services (i.e., palliative care and hospice). Grounded in Communicated Narrative Sense-Making theory, this study extends knowledge about how the stories told about end-of-life by bereaved family members affect and reflect their sense-making, well-being and importantly, potential disparities in end-of-life care. MethodsSemi-structured interviews with 25 bereaved individuals were conducted regarding their experiences with the terminal illness and death of an immediate family member. Using a framework of family bereavement narratives, a cross-case data analysis demonstrated qualitative patterns between (in)access to end-of-life care and how participants framed bereavement stories. ResultsFour themes illustrated the continuum of communication that families engaged in when making sense of end-of-life experiences, including reflections on silence, tempered frustrations, comfort with care, and support from beyond. InnovationThis innovative qualitative connection between family members' bereavement stories and end-of-life care emphasizes the importance of employing a health equity lens within hospice and palliative care, especially in addressing the important aim of comprehensively supporting families even when illness ends. This study demonstrates that access to, quality of, and imagining beyond current structures for EOL may be vital factors for facilitating effective sense-making for the dying and their family systems. ConclusionThese findings illustrate the potential interconnections between (in)access to end-of-life care, sense-making, and communication for individuals and families experiencing terminal illness and bereavement.

“You Don’t Want My Help?” The Negative and Positive Consequences of Help Offer Rejection

Helping is ubiquitous in organizations and vital to individual and organizational effectiveness. Yet, for various reasons, offers to help are sometimes rejected. Help offeror reactions to help offer rejection, or how employees respond to coworkers refusing their propositions to assist with work tasks, is an important but overlooked area of inquiry in organizational research. Although negative reactions to having help rejected might seem intuitive, help offer rejection may also produce positive outcomes for help offerors. Drawing upon sociometer and sensemaking theories, we present a theoretical model in which help offer rejection indirectly reduces subsequent helping through reduced organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and indirectly increases subsequent creativity through enhanced sensemaking. We propose that the strength of these effects is moderated by coworkers’ explanation sensitivity such that coworkers’ sensitive and sincere communication reduces the negative effect on OBSE and enhances the positive effect on sensemaking. We test and find general support for this conceptual model in two multiwave, multisource field studies of full-time workers and in an experimental vignette study. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and suggest fruitful avenues for future research.

“We’ve Had to Relearn All of Our Family Dynamics”: Communicated Narrative Sense-Making of Bereavement Following Terminal Illness in U.S. Families

ABSTRACT A family member’s death from terminal illness can impact the entire family in profound ways. Surviving family members must make sense of their bereavement, though few are offered spaces to tell their stories in ways that might help them do so. The purpose of this study was to explore the content (meanings, values, and beliefs) and types of family bereavement narratives crafted by individuals living in the United States upon an immediate family member’s death due to terminal illness. Grounded in Communicated Narrative Sense-Making theory, we conducted 25 semi-structured interviews and engaged in both reflexive and narrative thematic analyses. Our findings include seven primary themes (illuminating identity, honoring dignity, sharing (dis)connection, reconfiguring relationships, transforming expectations, evolving beliefs, looking out) organized into three types of stories (Past, Present, Future). We discuss these findings and conclude by identifying key theoretical and practical implications.

The role of internal communication on employee loyalty – a theoretical synthesis

PurposeThis paper aims to propose various theoretical lenses to explore the relationship between internal communication (IC) and its impact on employee loyalty.Design/methodology/approachA systematic review followed by a synthesis of the literature is adopted after identifying articles from various databases such as Scopus, Google Scholar and EBSCO and found that employee loyalty remains a significant gap in organisational IC research. The review will bring greater attention and focus for scholars to check how IC can help increase employee loyalty using the proposed theories – more so for IC in the Asia-Pacific.FindingsThe findings from this paper explicitly highlight that both individual/managerial theories (social cognitive, social identity, social exchange, expectancy and socio-analytic theories) and organisational theories (network, resource-based view and sensemaking theories) are close and relevant to study the IC and employee loyalty.Originality/valueThe value of this review is to move forward the debate on how IC can significantly contribute to developing employee outcomes (loyalty), how it can further enhance employee performance and commitment and what theories better explain this relationship. This review will inspire and inform future scholars to explore IC’s role in employee loyalty in the Asia-Pacific context.

The politics of organisational sensemaking: a theory of sensesplitting

ABSTRACT School leadership was transformed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. In this crisis, principals organised schooling amidst extreme confusion and uncertainty. Using sensemaking theory to capture how leaders identified, interpreted, and acted on this novel situation, this longitudinal qualitative study describes how school leaders, in interaction with stakeholders, generated understanding during the pandemic. We draw particular attention to a set of actors – parents – who elevated their participation in education broadly and sensemaking specifically in ways that have yet to be explored in other educational research. We examine the active role parents played in shaping educational decisions, their interaction with school leadership, and the growing polarisation exacerbated by the deepening political crisis that frames the field of education more generally. Our findings highlight how school leaders and parents held competing beliefs about how schools should be organised, leading to a process of what we call sensesplitting, the growth of two narratives emerging out of the same phenomena. This study offers important insight into how organisational sensemaking in education is increasingly shaped by parents, politics, and school leadership and the impact of this shift on leaders’ decision-making.

Commercializing University Innovations: A Sense-Making Perspective to Communicate Between Academics and Industry

Technology transfer offices (TTOs) play a key role in helping universities commercialize research and distribute knowledge. Nonetheless, there remains an incomplete understanding of the communication, which takes place between academics, industry partners, and TTO staff. The aim of this article is to examine, with the use of sense-making theory, strategies used by TTO employees as they work with academics and industry partners to commercialize intellectual property. In order to achieve this aim, an ethnographic exploratory case study was undertaken at a university TTO. The collected information then became the basis for qualitative interviews with TTO staff from 13 universities in Scotland. The study contributes to the sense-making theory by explaining how, during the commercialization conversations, TTO employees can deliberately interrupt the sense-making process through “dumbing down.” Our research introduces the TTO employee as a mediator and examines the role of the TTO staff in facilitating the sense-making process. The findings illustrate how someone who is not an expert in the field can add to the sense-making process. The study suggests that TTO employees intentionally engage in a “dumbing down process” to make complicated conversations easy to understand.

“They Masked our Children”: School District Communication Officers’ Sensemaking of Parent Activists During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, school board meetings were regularly featured on news broadcasts and social media platforms, depicting scenes of conflict, controversy, and disruption. We wondered how school district communication officers made sense of and remembered parent activists during the pandemic. Using sensemaking theory as a guiding framework, we analyzed data from interviews with 22 school district public information officers (PIOs) in Texas. Data analysis revealed what PIOs noticed (e.g. uncertainty, school board politicization, and closing/opening schools), their meaning-making (e.g. “return-to-normalcy” parents and “risk-averse” parents), and their actions (high vs. low engagement). With regard to remembering, or legacy, emergent themes included “strengthened relationships and learning” and the “domino effect,” which describes school districts where parent activism has persisted with new issues. In light of these findings, we offer theoretical and practical implications including recognition of several sensemaking tensions and impacts on PIOs of sensemaking under prolonged, stressful conditions.

Twelve tips for medical school faculty to support students with disabilities

As medical schools embrace diversity, it is increasingly acknowledged that medical students with disabilities must be welcome and supported in becoming physicians. Students should be able to ask for and receive reasonable accommodations to support their education. However, a practical shared approach to supporting medical students with disabilities is needed. The 12 tips in this article use sense-making theory as a framework to guide medical school faculty in supporting medical students with disabilities. The tips center on perceiving cues, creating interpretations, taking action, and communicating with students. The 12 tips can be utilized by faculty members across universities to take a proactive role in implementing support for medical students with disabilities and, in turn, nurturing an inclusive educational environment.

Uber structure's managerial algorithmic communication and drivers' health issues: sensemaking of work strategic resistance

This article focuses on the role that algorithms play as a communicative infrastructure that contributes to poorer occupational health in the gig economy by interviewing 50 Uber drivers based on the life-story methodological approach. Specifically, the paper draws attention to Uber structure's managerial algorithmic communication and its effects on drivers' occupational health by engaging with Giddens's theoretical framework of structure-agency and Weick's theory of sensemaking. Furthermore, the study also explores the different factors contributing to the construction of individual and collective resistance of drivers to Uber's monopoly. The findings reveal that Uber's structure imprisons the users' freedom of negotiation and action, which creates a stressful work environment as managerial algorithmic communication only functions effectively in ideal working conditions, while abnormality is very frequent in a profession like transportation. Driver agency consists of organizing individual and collective resistance to change Uber's work decisions and weaken them. On an outside platform, resistance strategies are deployed by drivers to pressure Uber, with the goal of protecting their occupational health.

Limited engagement of SMEs with social media: A structuration and sensemaking perspective

Despite the worldwide rapidly growing social media use, previous surveys have shown an adoption rate below average among SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). The problem of why and how SMEs engage with social media has received scant attention. Informed by structuration and sensemaking theories, this qualitative inquiry attempts to close this gap by scrutinizing cognitive and collective pre-adoption aspects. Differently perceived technology features, the structural context of the ecosystem, and the triggering conditions as well as their role for individual and collective understanding and decision-making activities form the building blocks of a processual framework and the derivation of further research avenues.

Organizational sustainability schemes align with weak sustainability

AbstractWhile sustainability research is expansive, studies of business‐internal practices and resulting sustainability outcomes are largely unexplored. This research fills this gap by assessing the sustainability schemes that organizations internally employ to guide sustainability efforts. Content analysis is applied to 20 environmentally oriented sustainability schemes, through the triangulated lenses of strong sustainability and sensemaking theories. Each scheme is quantitatively assessed for positioning within the Stages of Sustainability model and rank abundance curves are generated to compare relative sustainability strength among the schemes for potential recommendations in practice or future research. Results show that 100% of the sustainability schemes in this study align with various forms of weak sustainability, although five commendable schemes are more advanced than the others. Given this finding, it is expected that applying the sustainability schemes from our sample in research and practice will perpetuate weak, business‐as‐usual, sustainability while prolonging the wait for strong ecological sustainability. Novel contributions of this research include empirical evidence to support claims that sustainability schemes are aligned with weak sustainability, and the identification of the sustainability strength of sustainability schemes. Additionally, numerous calls from researchers to consider sustainability strength in research are heeded. Implications for practitioners, scheme developers, and academics relate to the development of schemes, business‐internal practices, research, and teaching that aligns with ecological science‐oriented, strong sustainability instead of the current approach that aligns with weak sustainability.

Making Sense of Change Through Simulation: Organizational Futures at Play

ABSTRACT Simulation can be a powerful vehicle for prospective sensemaking, especially in organizational change processes where actors’ ability to engage with possible futures is essential. Yet, the way that actors enact different potential futures together via simulation has not been fully explored nor investigated across different contexts. We report on a qualitative study of how healthcare staff in an emergency department (ED) made sense of a planned change process via a simulation tool to explore how moving into a new building might impact their work. We observed simulation sessions and interviewed managers and staff. Using sensemaking theory, we analyse how actors engaged in iterations of different forms of prospective sensemaking together, both in the simulated organizational change and of the organizational change process itself. We found that the way actors used their bodies and the simulation tool to experience potential changes in work environment and work processes elicited emotions such as worry and excitement and deliberations about consequences and potential actions. Our study highlights the interwoven embodied, material and emotional elements of prospective sensemaking: through simulation, we experience and feel the possible futures that can arise from change. MAD statement This article demonstrates how simulation tools can facilitate sensemaking of organizational change in and between individuals. It shows how simulations of work in future physical surroundings can elicit strong emotions such as worry and hope for the imagined futures. The findings shed light on how people, who are trying to explore what organizational change might mean for them and their work, relate to desired and undesired futures through their bodies and physical surroundings. Such prospective sensemaking is a significant driver of organizational change. Therefore, understanding the embodied, material and emotional aspects underpinning such processes is important for both scholarship and practice.

Shaping teachers’ enactment of inclusion through understanding in Ghana: a sense-making perspective

ABSTRACT The current study explores how teachers’ understanding of inclusion shapes enactment of inclusion in Ghana via the prism of sense-making theory. Data were collected using a multi-case qualitative study technique and then analysed with an interpretative paradigm. I interpreted enactment of inclusion from the viewpoint of inclusive teachers using probes and prompts and non-participant observation. Three basic schools A, B, and C in the Mampong Municipality were purposefully used to choose six inclusive teachers. Inclusion was defined as integrating learners with diversities into classrooms alongside peers who are growing and developing. The disability view of inclusion impacted the programme enactment as it influenced their choice of teaching pedagogies and other teachers’ additional roles. Teachers used demonstration methods, jigsaw, barnstorming, group-based, and participatory teaching methods in teaching the children. The study recommends that teachers should be provided with teaching learning resources and train them on how to effectively teach learners, and to adapt educational content and materials.