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Business analytics (BA) is a new frontier of technology development and has enormous potential for value creation. Information systems research shows ample evidence of its positive business impacts and organizational performance. However, there is limited understanding of how decision-makers or users of BA outcomes actually engage with data analysts in the process of data-driven insight generation and how they improve their understanding of business environments using BA outcomes. To aid this engagement and understanding, this study investigates the interaction between decision-makers and data analysts when they attempt to uncover data capacities and business needs and acquire business insights from BA tools.

This study employs an interpretive field study with thematic analysis. The authors conducted interviews with 31 participants who all relied on BA in their daily decisions. The study participants were engaged in different BA roles, including data analysts and decision-makers. They validated the applicability and usefulness of our findings through a focus group with eight practitioners, including decision-makers and data analysts from the same companies.

This study proposes a process model of data-driven sensemaking and sensegiving based on Weick’s sensemaking framework. The findings exhibit that decision-makers are engaged in sensemaking by identifying areas of focus, determining BA scope, evaluating generated insights and turning BA into action. The findings also show that data analysts engage in sensemaking by consolidating data, data understanding, preparing preliminary outcomes and generating actionable reports. This study shows how sensemaking processes and sensegiving activities work together over time through immediate enactment, selection and decision cycles.

This study is a first attempt to understand interactions in the context of BA using the perspective of sensemaking and sensegiving.

How an entrepreneurial organisation sets the problem space determines the future venturing mode. However, the factors that contribute to differences in problem space are still not well-developed. Based on sensemaking theory, this study explores the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of organisational sensemaking on effectual problem setting.

The study is based on survey data from 162 entrepreneurial organisations in China. Hierarchical regression is used for analysing the data and testing the hypotheses.

Organisational sensemaking has a negative effect on effectual problem setting and a positive impact on outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability; outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability has a negative effect on effectual problem setting; outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability plays a partially mediating role in the relationship between organisational sensemaking and effectual problem setting. Organisational size negatively moderates the relationship between organisational sensemaking and outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability. It also negatively moderates the indirect effect of organisational sensemaking on effectual problem setting through outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability.

First, this study contributes to the research on effectual problem setting by introducing organisational sensemaking as an antecedent. Second, this study extends the literature on organisational sensemaking by showing how organisational sensemaking affects entrepreneurial uncertainty, instead of treating uncertainty as an exogenous shock. Third, this study introduced the outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability to reveal the mediating mechanism between organisational sensemaking and effectual problem setting.

The purpose of this study is to explore the process of initial sensemaking that organizational members activate when they reflect on AI adoption in their work settings, and how the perceived features of AI technologies trigger sensemaking processes which in turn have the potential to influence workplace learning modes and trajectories.

We adopted an explorative qualitative and interactive approach to capture free fantasies and imaginative ideas of AI among people within the industry. We adopt a conceptual perspective that combines theories on initial sensemaking and workplace learning as a theoretical lens to analyze data collected during 23 focus groups held at four large Swedish manufacturing companies. The data were analyzed using the Gioia method.

Two aggregated dimensions were defined and led to the development of an integrated conceptualization of the initial sensemaking of AI technology adoption. Specifically, sensemaking triggered by abstract features of AI technology mainly pointed to an exploitative learning path. Sensemaking triggered by concrete features of the technology mainly pointed to explorative paths, where socio-technical processes appear to be crucial in the process of AI adoption.

This is one of the first studies that attempts to explore and conceptualize how organizations make sense of prospective workplace learning in the context of AI adoption.

This conceptual paper aims to present a new, integrated model for change readiness that focuses on affective sensemaking among intra-organizational members. Change processes are often hindered by lack of preparedness, which can be justified by organizational members' emotional resistance to change and divergent understandings of its meaning. Our paper proposes a normative model depicting the interactive process between middle-managers and employees until convergence of meaning is achieved and the organization is ready to change.

The authors offer a conceptual process model that describes how employees prepare for organizational change. The model illustrates how emotionally laden narratives enable employees to make sense of organizational change communicated by middle managers.

The sensemaking process is initiated by the negative emotions employees often experience when organizational change is first presented. Then middle managers must transform the negative felt emotions into positive valence via the strategic use of narratives that contain an affective component. This is done to increase the likelihood that convergent sensemaking takes place. Until this stage, intra-organizational members holding different perspectives about the need to change, engage in discussions in which the conflicting views are supported by the instrumental and systematic use of emotional tools with different valence.

First, we contribute to the change readiness literature by offering a detailed process for managers to influence individual readiness for change in their organizations. Our paper proposes a normative model depicting the interactive process between middle-managers and employees until convergence of meaning is achieved and the organization is ready to change. Future work needs to empirically test our model.

We contribute to the sensemaking literature by integrating positive and negative valence into the process for understanding organizational change. Finally, we contribute to our practical understanding of convergent sensemaking processes through the strategic use of narratives in organizations.

Our paper proposes a normative model depicting the interactive process between middle-managers and employees until convergence of meaning is achieved and the organization is ready to organizational and social change.

Our main contributions are three-fold. First, we contribute to the change readiness literature by offering a detailed process for managers to influence individual readiness for change in their organizations. Secondly, we contribute to the sensemaking literature by integrating positive and negative valence into the process for understanding organizational change. Finally, we contribute to our understanding of convergent sensemaking processes through the strategic use of narratives.

How can managers reduce information asymmetry in dyadic manager-external stakeholder relationships in a complex and evolving environment? Addressing this question has significant implications for firm survival, growth, and competitive advantage.

We have adopted a multiparadigm approach to theory building, known as metatriangulation. We integrate the dynamic capabilities, sensemaking, and evolutionary theory literatures to theorize how managers can relate to stakeholders in a complex and evolving environment.

We propose, via a conceptual framework and three propositions, “evolutionary sensemaking” as the managerial metacognitive dynamic capability that helps managers hone their understanding based on the evolutionary changes in the stakeholder’s interpretations of information quality preferences. The framework unfolds across three evolutionary stages: sensing preferences' variation of the stakeholder, seizing preferences, and transforming for complexity alignment and retention. The propositions focus on managing complexity in stakeholder information quality preference, employing cognitive capabilities to simplify, interpret, and align interpretations for effective information asymmetry reduction.

To develop the metacognitive dynamic capability of evolutionary sensemaking, managers need to train for and foster the underlying complex cognitive capabilities by enhancing their (1) perception and attention skills, (2) problem-solving and reasoning skills, and (3) language, communication, and social cognition skills, focusing specifically on reducing the complexity embedded in stakeholder cognition and diverse stakeholder preferences for information quality. Contrary to the current advice to “keep things simple” and provide “more” information to the stakeholders for opportunism reduction, trust-building, and superior governance, our framework suggests that managers hone their cognitive capabilities by learning to deal with the underlying complexity.

The proposed framework and propositions address research gaps in reducing information asymmetry. It enriches the dynamic capabilities literature by recognizing complexity (as opposed to opportunism) as an alternative source of information asymmetry, which needs to be addressed in this stream of research. It extends the sensemaking literature by identifying the complexity sources – i.e. stakeholder preferences for diverse information quality attributes and the associated cognitive preference interpretation processes. The article enhances evolutionary theory by delving into microprocesses related to information asymmetry reduction, which the existing literature does not thoroughly investigate.

We examine how interpersonal behavior and social interaction influence team sensemaking and subsequent team actions during a hospital-based health information technology (HIT) implementation project.

Over the course of 18 months, we directly observed the interpersonal interactions of HIT implementation teams using a sensemaking lens.

We identified three voice-promoting strategies enacted by team leaders that fostered team member voice and sensemaking; communicating a vision; connecting goals to team member values; and seeking team member input. However, infrequent leader expressions of anger quickly undermined team sensemaking, halting dialog essential to problem solving. By seeking team member opinions, team leaders overcame the negative effects of anger.

Leaders must enact voice-promoting behaviors and use them throughout a team’s engagement. Further, training teams in how to use conflict to achieve greater innovation may improve sensemaking essential to project risk mitigation.

Health care work processes are complex; teams involved in implementing improvements must be prepared to deal with conflicting, contentious issues, which will arise during change. Therefore, team conflict training may be essential to sustaining sensemaking.

Future research should seek to identify team interactions that foster sensemaking, especially when topics are difficult or unwelcome, then determine the association between staff sensemaking and the impact on HIT implementation outcomes.

We are among the first to focus on project teams tasked with HIT implementation. This research extends our understanding of how leaders’ behaviors might facilitate or impeded speaking up among project teams in health care settings.

Purpose – To offer a theoretical explanation for observed physician resistance and rejection of high reliability patient safety initiatives.

Design/methodology/approach – A grounded theoretical qualitative approach, utilizing the organizational theory of sensemaking, provided the foundation for inductive and deductive reasoning employed to analyze medical staff rejection of two successfully performing high reliability programs at separate hospitals.

Findings – Physician behaviors resistant to patient-centric high reliability processes were traced to provider-centric physician sensemaking.

Research limitations/implications – Research, conducted with the advantage that prospective studies have over the limitations of this retrospective investigation, is needed to evaluate the potential for overcoming physician resistance to innovation implementation, employing strategies based upon these findings and sensemaking theory in general.

Practical implications – If hospitals are to emulate high reliability industries that do successfully manage environments of extreme hazard, physicians must be fully integrated into the complex teams required to accomplish this goal.

Social implications – Reforming health care, through high reliability organizing, with its attendant continuous focus on patient-centric processes, offers a distinct alternative to efforts directed primarily at reforming health care insurance. It is by changing how health care is provided that true cost efficiencies can be achieved. Technology and the insights of organizational science present the opportunity of replacing the current emphasis on privileged information with collective tools capable of providing quality and safety in health care.

Originality/value – The fictions that have sustained a provider-centric health care system have been challenged. The benefits of patient-centric care should be obtainable.

Business ethics provide a potent source of competitive advantage, placing increasing pressure on organizations to create and maintain an ethical workforce. Nonetheless, ethical breaches continue to permeate corporate life, suggesting that there is something missing from how we conceptualize and institutionalize organizational ethics. The current effort seeks to fill this void in two ways. First, we introduce an extended ethical framework premised on sensemaking in organizations. Within this framework, we suggest that multiple individual, organizational, and societal factors may differentially influence the ethical sensemaking process. Second, we contend that human resource management plays a central role in sustaining workplace ethics and explore the strategies through which human resource personnel can work to foster an ethical culture and spearhead ethics initiatives. Future research directions applicable to scholars in both the ethics and human resources domains are provided.

Marion has just taken on the directorship of a joint university/public library. You, as her protégé, are interested in observing how she approaches the new venture. You are curious about what information she will gather, whose advice she will seek, how she will figure out the expectations others have of her and the library, how she will prioritize the many challenges before her, and how she will negotiate her leadership role with the staff. In other words, you want to study Marion's organizational sensemaking.

This study examines how highly disruptive issues cause profound dissonance in societal members that are cognitively and emotionally invested in existing institutions. The authors use PETA’s (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) entrepreneurial advocacy for animal rights to show how this highly disruptive issue interrupted and violated taken-for-granted interpretations of institutions and institutional life. The authors compare 30 YouTube videos of PETA’s advocacy to explore pathways to effective sensegiving and sensemaking of highly disruptive issues. The findings augment the analytical synergy that exists between sensemaking and institutional analysis by unpacking the micro-level dynamics that may facilitate transformational institutional change.