Definition
There is no single agreed upon definition of sensemaking, but there is consensus that it is a process that allows people to understand ambiguous, equivocal or confusing issues or events. Disagreements about the meaning of sensemaking exist around whether sensemaking is a mental process within the individual, a social process or a process that occurs as part of discussion; whether it is an ongoing daily process or only occurs in response to rare events; and whether sensemaking describes past events or considers the future. Overall five distinct schools of sensemaking/sense-making have been identified.https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756841/obo-9780199756841-0112.xmlRoots in social psychology
In 1966, Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn published ''The Social Psychology of Organizations'' ( Katz & Kahn, 1966). In 1969, Karl Weick played on this title in his book ''The Social Psychology of Organizing'', shifting the focus from organizations as entities to organiz''ing'' as an activity. It was especially the second edition, published ten years later ( Weick, 1979) that established Weick's approach in organization studies.Weick's approach to sensemaking
Weick identified seven properties of sensemaking ( Weick, 1995): # ''Identity'' and identification is central – who people think they are in their context shapes what they enact and how they interpret events ( Pratt, 2000; Currie & Brown, 2003; Weick, et al., 2005; Thurlow & Mills, 2009; Watson, 2009). # ''Retrospection'' provides the opportunity for sensemaking: the point of retrospection in time affects what people notice ( Dunford & Jones, 2000), thus attention and interruptions to that attention are highly relevant to the process ( Gephart, 1993). # People ''enact'' the environments they face in dialogues and narratives ( Bruner, 1991; Watson, 1998; Currie & Brown, 2003). As people speak, and build narrative accounts, it helps them understand what they think, organize their experiences and control and predict events ( Isabella, 1990; Weick, 1995; Abolafia, 2010) and reduce complexity in the context of change management ( Kumar & Singhal, 2012). # Sensemaking is a ''social'' activity in that plausible stories are preserved, retained or shared ( Isabella, 1990; Maitlis, 2005). However, the audience for sensemaking includes the speakers themselves ( Watson, 1995) and the narratives are "both individual and shared...an evolving product of conversations with ourselves and with others" ( Currie & Brown, 2003: 565). # Sensemaking is ''ongoing'', so Individuals simultaneously shape and react to the environments they face. As they project themselves onto this environment and observe the consequences they learn about their identities and the accuracy of their accounts of the world ( Thurlow & Mills, 2009). This is a feedback process so even as individuals deduce their identity from the behaviour of others towards them, they also try to influence this behaviour. As Weick argued, "The basic idea of sensemaking is that reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs" ( Weick, 1993: 635). # People ''extract cues'' from the context to help them decide on what information is relevant and what explanations are acceptable ( Salancick & Pfeffer, 1978; Brown, Stacey, & Nandhakumar, 2007). Extracted cues provide points of reference for linking ideas to broader networks of meaning and are 'simple, familiar structures that are seeds from which people develop a larger sense of what may be occurring." ( Weick, 1995: 50). # People favour ''plausibility over accuracy'' in accounts of events and contexts ( Currie & Brown, 2003; Brown, 2005; Abolafia, 2010): "in an equivocal, postmodern world, infused with the politics of interpretation and conflicting interests and inhabited by people with multiple shifting identities, an obsession with accuracy seems fruitless, and not of much practical help, either" ( Weick, 1995: 61). Each of these seven aspects interact and intertwine as individuals interpret events. Their interpretations become evident throughFrom decision-making to sensemaking
The rise of the sensemaking perspective marks a shift of focus in organization studies from how decisions shape organizations to how meaning drives organizing ( Weick, 1993). The aim was to focus attention on the largely cognitive activity of framing experienced situations as meaningful. It is a collaborative process of creating shared awareness and understanding out of different individuals' perspectives and varied interests.From planning to action
Sensemaking scholars are less interested in the intricacies of planning than in the details of action ( Weick, 1995, p. 55).Uncertainty, ambiguity, and crisis
The sensemaking approach is often used to provide insight into factors that surface as organizations address either uncertain or ambiguous situations ( Weick 1988,Categories and related concepts
A 2014 review of the literature on sensemaking in organizations identified a dozen different categories of sensemaking and a half-dozen sensemaking related concepts ( Maitlis & Christianson, 2014). The categories of sensemaking included: constituent-minded, cultural, ecological, environmental, future-oriented, intercultural, interpersonal, market, political, prosocial, prospective, and resourceful. The sensemaking-related concepts included: sensebreaking, sensedemanding, sense-exchanging, sensegiving, sensehiding, and sense specification.Other applications
Sensemaking is central to the conceptual framework for military network-centric operations (NCO) espoused by theSee also
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