Sensemaking
Understanding Sensemaking
What is sensemaking?
Sensemaking or sense-making is the process by which people give meaning to their collective experiences. It has been defined as "the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rationalize what people are doing" (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005, p. 409). The concept was introduced to organizational studies by Karl E. Weick in the 1970s and has affected both theory and practice. Weick intended to encourage a shift away from the traditional focus of organization theorists on decision-making and towards the processes that constitute the meaning of the decisions that are enacted in behavior.
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 mental process within the individual, a social process or a process that occurs as part of discussion; whether it an ongoing daily process or only occurs in response to rare events; and whether sensemaking describes past events or considers the future.
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 organizing as an activity. It was especially the second edition, published ten years later (Weick, 1979) that established Weick's approach in organization studies.
From 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, 1993; Weick et al., 2005). Beginning in the 1980s with an influential re-analysis of the Bhopal disaster, Weick's name has come to be associated with the study of the situated sensemaking that influences the outcomes of disasters (Weick 1993).
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| Wikipedia - 2022 |
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Transdisciplinary thinking
Transdisciplinary work is holistic (It is synthetic in nature; it transcends disciplinary boundaries.); creative (The result of transdisciplinarity is the generation of new knowledge or at least a new combination of established knowledge.); and relevant to real-world issues (It reflects the multi-formed nature of reality itself).
Some theorists describe transdisciplinary thinking as a set of skills. These skills were observing, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modelling, play and synthesizing. we see transdisciplinary thinking as a mindset, a habit of mind and behaviour. Because transdisciplinary thinkers actively seek connections across disciplines and areas of expertise, they are not at all surprised to find them. In the transdisciplinary mind, knowledge is rethought, revealed, recombined, transformed. In short, we see transdisciplinary thinking as a mental or intellectual disposition towards intentional connection-seeking and connection-making. It is a meta-level attitude.
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| Thinking now: Transdisciplinary thinking as a disposition - Susan Drake - ACADEMIA Letters - 2021 |