Academy of Management Annals· 2014Q1
Sensemaking in Organizations: Taking Stock and Moving Forward
- 1,598citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2014year
Short summary
Sensemaking, the process of understanding novel or ambiguous events, is central to organizing and has seen intensified research over the last decade.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Sensemaking is defined as the process of understanding novel, ambiguous, or unexpected events.
- Research on sensemaking has intensified significantly over the past decade.
- The review examines how sensemaking is accomplished, including triggers, intersubjective meaning creation, and the role of action.
- Sensemaking's role in enabling organizational change, learning, and creativity is explored.
- The paper identifies theoretical and methodological opportunities for future sensemaking research.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Sensemaking is the process through which people work to understand issues or events that are novel, ambiguous, confusing, or in some other way violate expectations. As an activity central to organizing, sensemaking has been the subject of considerable research which has intensified over the last decade. We begin this review with a historical overview of the field, and develop a definition of sensemaking rooted in recurrent themes from the literature. We then review and integrate existing theory and research, focusing on two key bodies of work. The first explores how sensemaking is accomplished, unpacking the sensemaking process by examining how events become triggers for sensemaking, how intersubjective meaning is created, and the role of action in sensemaking. The second body considers how sensemaking enables the accomplishment of other key organizational processes, such organizational change, learning, and creativity and innovation. The final part of the chapter draws on areas of difference and debate highlighted throughout the review to discuss the implications of key tensions in the sensemaking literature, and identifies important theoretical and methodological opportunities for the field.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Academy of Management Annals, 2014 · DOI ↗
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Field: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
Organizational Behavior and Human Resource ManagementBusiness, Management and Accounting