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Article
Publication date: 8 January 2019

Maude Brunet and Daniel Forgues

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a case of collective sensemaking about the project success of the multifunctional amphitheater of Quebec (Canada).

1302

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a case of collective sensemaking about the project success of the multifunctional amphitheater of Quebec (Canada).

Design/methodology/approach

For this explorative and qualitative research, the authors started from the post-mortem document and complemented their comprehension with six semi-structured interviews with the main project actors and other public documents regarding this project.

Findings

According to the respondents, the main success factors of this project can be attributed to: a clear governance structure; proven project management and construction methods; the use of emerging collaborative practices in construction (such as building information modeling (BIM) and lean construction); an adapted policy for procurement; as well as a code of values and ethics shared by all stakeholders.

Originality/value

The sensemaking perspective has been scarcely mobilized in project management studies, emerging from a constructivist view of reality and being sensitive about material-discursive practices. This exploratory study explores a case of collective sensemaking of a major project success and suggests avenues for major and megaprojects research. Lessons learned and implications for practice are also outlined. The conclusion allows a synthesis and an opening to consider how practitioners and researchers can build on this (and other successful) case(s) for future projects and research.

Details

International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, vol. 12 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1753-8378

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 June 2020

Eva Schlindwein and Mike Geppert

The purpose of this paper is to advance micro-level theorising of sociocultural post-merger integration (PMI) by merging insights from international business and management…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to advance micro-level theorising of sociocultural post-merger integration (PMI) by merging insights from international business and management research on the cognitive and affective dimensions of PMI.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper follows a narrative approach to review the previously separate literatures on cognition and emotion in PMI situations. It draws on insights from management research beyond the PMI context to integrate these literatures and as a result, develops a process model of emotional sensemaking in PMI.

Findings

An emotional sensemaking approach to PMI helps to explain when and why events might or might not motivate individuals to revisit their interpretation of a PMI and illustrates how and why similar PMI events can lead to opposite individual reactions and, thus, obtain heterogeneous integration outcomes.

Research limitations/implications

The paper discusses how an emotional sensemaking approach can be applied to sociocultural PMI and points to new directions for future studies based on this application. As the model concentrates on the individual level, theoretical implications for sociocultural PMI at the meso- and macro-levels remain limited.

Originality/value

This paper brings forward the dynamics that underlie the processes and outcomes of individuals’ behaviour and reactions to PMI events. The proposed process model of emotional sensemaking in PMI responds to recent calls by sociocultural PMI scholars to promote a processual rather than event-based view of PMI, with a focus on individual actors and an emphasis on the multifaceted dynamics and outcomes of PMI.

Details

critical perspectives on international business, vol. 17 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-2043

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 December 2019

Adriana van Hilten

The purpose of this paper is to introduce Bourdieu’s social theory, and its “thinking tools” of habitus, doxa, field and capital, as a sensemaking theory.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce Bourdieu’s social theory, and its “thinking tools” of habitus, doxa, field and capital, as a sensemaking theory.

Design/methodology/approach

The emic research studied, for a particular group, the firm-wide implementation of a new system. The study used data occurring naturally in the organization (executive newsletters), and externally (third-party surveys), as well as 23 participant interviews to structure the social space (field) and determine what is of interest (identity). Interviews were coded for habitus, doxa, field, capital, symbolic violence and strategies to re-assert interviewees’ own doxa versus logic imposed by the powerful.

Findings

A unique, esteemed identity was being erased through executive attempts to introduce a new culture at the firm, and the new systems represented a challenge to this valued identity. Participants used strategies to re-assert their identity through not participating in the logic of the new tool: discussing misuse, lack of use, relative unimportance and low priority of the new tool.

Practical implications

Change that threatens an esteemed, valued identity is more likely to be resisted. The logic of an established practice or system (beyond merely gathering user requirements) is beneficial in understanding potential reactions to a new system. Change in systems that occur simultaneously with the imposition of a new culture, particularly where the system is seen as being a representation of that imposed culture, may be resisted through non-practice (misuse or lack of use) of the new system.

Originality/value

The paper demonstrates the applicability of Bourdieu’s social theory to organizational studies, providing a sensemaking of change and acts of resistance.

Details

Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol. 34 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0953-4814

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 October 2012

Chantal Sylvain and Lise Lamothe

There has been considerable effort in recent years to link and integrate professional services more closely for patients with comorbidities. However, difficulties persist…

Abstract

Purpose

There has been considerable effort in recent years to link and integrate professional services more closely for patients with comorbidities. However, difficulties persist, especially at the clinical level. This study aims to shed light on these difficulties by examining the process of sensemaking in professionals directly involved in this integration.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted an eight‐year longitudinal case study of an organization specializing in mental health and substance abuse. Different data collection methods were used, including 34 interviews conducted between 2003 and 2009, observations and document analysis. The authors performed a qualitative analysis of the data using a processual perspective.

Findings

This paper provides empirical insights about the nature of the sensemaking process in which professionals collectively participate and the effects of this process on the evolution of integrated services. It suggests that the development of integrated practices results from an evolutional and collective process of constructing meanings that is rooted in the work activities of the professionals involved.

Practical implications

By drawing attention to the capacity of professionals to shape the projects they are implementing, this study questions the capacity of managers to actually manage such a process. In order to obtain the expected benefits of integration projects, such emergent dynamics must first be recognized and then supported. Only then can thought be given to mastering them.

Research limitations/implications

The fact that this is a single case study is not a limitation per se, although it does raise the issue of the transferability of results. Replicating the study in other contexts would verify the applicability of the authors' conclusions.

Originality/value

This study offers a fresh perspective on the difficulties generally encountered at the clinical level when trying to integrate services. It makes a significant contribution to work on the dynamics of sensemaking in organizational life.

Details

Journal of Health Organization and Management, vol. 26 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7266

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 6 November 2015

Chloé Vitry and Eduardo Chia

Actors of territories faced with new managerial innovations have to develop new knowledge and behaviours to seize these innovations and create a vision of the territory. This is…

Abstract

Purpose

Actors of territories faced with new managerial innovations have to develop new knowledge and behaviours to seize these innovations and create a vision of the territory. This is part of what we call governance learning: the ability of individuals to create new knowledge and behaviour for collective action within the territory. The purpose of this chapter is to explore this concept.

Methodology/approach

Drawing from a case study of a periurban territory in France, we analyse how the board members of a Community of Communes can learn to work together, articulating organisational learning theories, actor-network theory and the concept of organisational myths.

Findings

We explore the enrolment process necessary to ‘build’ the network and interest them in using the innovation; identify three types of governance learning that turn the network into a collective: sensemaking, instrument-seizing and sensegiving; show how these myths are necessary to turn collective knowledge into organisational knowledge.

Research limitations/implications

With both a behavioural and evolutionary approach to governance, we show that power, relationships and learning processes are tightly intertwined within the governance networks. Our use of organisational learning theory also demonstrates how it can be used in a more systematic way to describe the learning processes witnessed in governance situations.

Originality/value

This research brings new light to the understanding of how territorial governance can be developed and how managerial innovations can provoke learning situations and more specifically how stakeholders learn to define common goals and a shared vision of their territory to enable collective action.

Details

Contingency, Behavioural and Evolutionary Perspectives on Public and Nonprofit Governance
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-429-4

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 29 June 2022

Kirsi Peura and Ulla Hytti

This paper investigates how academic teachers engage in identity work and make sense of entrepreneurship and academia in an entrepreneurship training programme.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper investigates how academic teachers engage in identity work and make sense of entrepreneurship and academia in an entrepreneurship training programme.

Design/methodology/approach

By employing a sensemaking approach, the paper inductively analyses materials from a business idea development camp organised for academic teachers.

Findings

In collective sensemaking during the camp, non-academic facilitators strongly influenced the reflection-in-experience via normative ideas of entrepreneurship and their othering of entrepreneurship from academic work. In their post-camp individual essays, the academic teachers reflect-on-experience and draw parallels between entrepreneurship and academic work constructing sameness.

Research limitations/implications

Longitudinal research is needed in identity work and sensemaking among academic teachers in relation to entrepreneurship.

Practical implications

Universities need to offer arenas for teachers and other faculty to support identity work and sensemaking.

Originality/value

This study generates new understanding of how academic teachers engage in identity work and make sense of entrepreneurship in training when interacting with others. It underscores the importance of time needed for reflection-on-action.

Details

Education + Training, vol. 65 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0040-0912

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 March 2018

Simon Flandin, Germain Poizat and Marc Durand

Safety and organizational research indicates that fostering resilience in organizations is a promising way for improving safety, albeit concrete means to implement resilience are…

Abstract

Purpose

Safety and organizational research indicates that fostering resilience in organizations is a promising way for improving safety, albeit concrete means to implement resilience are still lacking, especially in the educational field. The purpose of this paper is to propose four principles for training design derived from past and current studies the authors conduct in high-risk organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

Training for resilience is considered within an enactive approach of human activity building on its properties of autonomy, structural coupling, self-organization, emergence, sensemaking, and metastability.

Findings

The article describes four educational design principles aiming at improving individual, collective, and organizational resilience: encourage mimetic experiences; pay attention to attention and concernedness; perturb and turn into an event; support participatory-sensemaking and collective sensemaking.

Research limitations/implications

The training program the authors propose may be challenging to assess. Besides, the most durable solutions to improve safety through resilience are to be found at the crossroad between organizational design and training/development policies. Future research should determine the implementability criteria which are likely to support the use of the principles the authors propose, and contribute to enrich this educational foundation.

Originality/value

Education and training are conceived herein as high-order means to improve safety through resilience in high-risk organizations, fostering the capacity of the operators and organization to develop efficiently and in the long run. We provide independent but complementary training principles that cannot be hierarchized, but that can be locally prioritized in organizations.

Details

Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, vol. 32 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7282

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 September 2004

Tony Huzzard

In identifying a bias within situated learning theory towards routine work practices, this paper develops a theoretical framework for assessing the relationships between learning…

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Abstract

In identifying a bias within situated learning theory towards routine work practices, this paper develops a theoretical framework for assessing the relationships between learning, sensemaking and power in the non‐routine practices of temporary organising. The paper locates processes of sensemaking and learning in a model of organisational change that attempts to render power in communities of practice more visible than has been the case in theorising hitherto, by focusing on sensegiving in change projects. Change is conceived in terms of an oscillation between the routines of permanent organising and the more experimental, innovative actions of temporary organising, where leaders mobilise actors to explore new ideas. The role of sensegiving in such processes, it is argued, helps shed light on the political nature of micro‐processes of change.

Details

Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 16 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-5626

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 November 2023

Paul Langley and Alison Rieple

This empirical study uncovers emotional sensemaking factors that cause changes in management perceptions about wicked strategic problems under dynamic complexity. These perception…

Abstract

Purpose

This empirical study uncovers emotional sensemaking factors that cause changes in management perceptions about wicked strategic problems under dynamic complexity. These perception changes improve understanding of, and solutions to, the wicked problem.

Design/methodology/approach

Senior managers from three large organizations in different sectors participated in gaming simulation workshops. The strategic issues at stake were intractable and divisive. Qualitative methods captured participants' perceptions of the problems and the dynamic complexity that they faced and how they changed.

Findings

Flawed management perceptions were revised as sensemaking processes were catalyzed by emotions of shock/surprise that came from experiencing unexpected stakeholder conduct within a simulation. The plausibility of the conduct was strengthened because managers were role-playing stakeholders. The shock/surprise emotion uncoupled attachment to entrenched beliefs, leading to a willingness to revise the flawed perceptions. The changed perceptions created new insights for a solution to the wicked problem.

Practical implications

Practical implications are how management practitioners can improve the tackling of wicked strategic problems through the use of shock and surprise in a gaming simulation.

Originality/value

This research extends theory on the role of emotions in sensemaking under dynamic complexity. The authors uncover how a hierarchy of managers' emotions used in sensemaking explains the catalytic effect of the shock and surprise of unexpected stakeholder conduct on revisions to their perceptions of the outcomes of the dynamic complexity.

Details

Management Decision, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 January 2016

Pernille Smith

Inter-organizational innovation is becoming an attractive development form in view of the complexity of many of today’s innovations. However, inter-organizational innovation does…

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Abstract

Purpose

Inter-organizational innovation is becoming an attractive development form in view of the complexity of many of today’s innovations. However, inter-organizational innovation does not often lead to the desired results. To understand this paradoxical situation, the purpose of this paper is to examine a high-novelty R & D collaboration between multiple organizations with focus on the occurrence of knowledge boundaries and their underlying mechanisms.

Design/methodology/approach

The analysis is based on a grounded longitudinal study of an inter-organizational R & D team. Participant observation data, interviews, and document data have been collected over three years.

Findings

The study identified six different knowledge boundaries characterized by processes of sensemaking, strategizing, and group identification. These three processes were all rooted in continuous attempts at the individual level to reduce uncertainty, and the findings therefore highlight the unexpected consequences of uncertainty reduction. Uncertainty reduction through sensemaking, strategizing, and group identification may reduce the uncertainty at the individual level but also provoke the emergence of knowledge boundaries at the team level, thereby impeding knowledge exchange. Furthermore, the knowledge integration literature highlights that knowledge boundaries are relational, but the identification of a cognitive boundary indicates that some problems are so complex that a knowledge boundary is delimited to the single individual.

Originality/value

Most research on knowledge boundaries has focussed on the elimination of knowledge boundaries through boundary objects and boundary spanners, but only little attention has been given to the underlying mechanisms of boundary emergence and dynamics. In this paper, it is argued that to efficiently manage knowledge boundaries, an understanding of their underlying mechanisms is needed.

Details

European Journal of Innovation Management, vol. 19 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1460-1060

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 3000