Search results for "Sensemaking"
showing 10 items of 31 documents
Cognitive biases in humanitarian sensemaking and decision-making lessons from field research
2016
Time and again, humanitarian decision-makers are confronted with stress and pressure, distorted, lacking and uncertain information, and thus they are working in conditions that are known to introduce or enforce biases. Decision analysis has been designed to overcome such biases, and a network of “digital responders” organized over the Internet has set out to improve judgments by providing better information. However, without any structured support to determine objectives, goals and preferences and detached from the context of operational decision-makers, remote analysts may face the very biases they are trying to help overcome. This article sets out to identify biases that matter for humani…
Clarifying Communication Professionals’ Tasks In Contributing To Organizational Decision Making
2017
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the tasks through which communication professionals and public relations contribute to organizational decision making. In-depth interviews were conducted with Finnish public relations professionals about how they contribute to organizational decision making. The findings provide a rich picture of the tasks in relation to this. The results show that public relations professionals contribute to organizational decision-making processes by nine different tasks. Furthermore, the results indicate that during an organizational decision-making process, professionals switch from one task to another over time, and work simultaneously on several tasks. This pape…
Why adopt ISO 9001 certification in hospitals? A case study of external triggers and sensemaking in an emergency department in Norway
2017
Abstract Background Certification and accreditation are widely used to achieve quality and safety in health care but are also questioned regarding their assumed effects. This is a challenge for policymakers and managers, since adoption of these regimes can have a circumstantial impact upon organizations. This study’s aim was to explore how external conditions catalyzed and triggered organizational change and internal sensemaking processes as part of an ISO 9001 certification process. Methods The study applied an explanatory single-case design, using a narrative approach, to retrospectively follow a sensemaking process in an emergency department in a Norwegian hospital undergoing ISO 9001 ce…
Introducing a sensemaking perspective to the service experience
2021
PurposeMost recent service experience research considers customers as sensemakers and sensemaking as a focal process in experience construction. Despite this, the sensemaking theory engendered in organization studies has not been applied in the quest for an in-depth understanding of the service experience. This study introduces a sensemaking perspective to the service experience and develops a conceptualization of how customers construct their experiences cognitively through sensemaking.Design/methodology/approachThe service experience literature is dominated by a focus on firms implementing service experiences for customers. This study, in contrast, investigates service experience and its …
One Rule to Rule Them All? Organisational Sensemaking of Corporate Responsibility
2015
Corporate responsibility (CR) has often been criticised as a decoupled organisational phenomenon: a publicly espoused rule that is not followed in daily organisational practices. We argue that a crucial reason for this criticism arises from the dominant in-house assumption of CR literature, which mitigates tensions and contradictions in organisational life by claiming that integrated rules result in coupled practices. We aim to provide new insights by problematising this in-house assumption and by examining how members of two organisations discursively make sense of CR, as a daily rule-bound practice, via three strategies: integration, differentiation and fragmentation. We elaborate the con…
Insights from a Simulation Model of Disaster Response: Generalization and Action Points
2016
In a prior paper we presented a system dynamics model that simulates responder behavior in a Norwegian landslide. The model shows how a set of vicious feedback loops caused by following standard organizational procedures that do not fit the disaster situation initially increases errors in response. Eventually learning and sensemaking in an improvisation/experimentation process leads to new emergent dynamics whereby the loops act virtuously. In this paper we aim to generalize this initial study by explaining in more detail how the model can describe large scale disaster responses of different types and how it relates to the wider disaster response literature. We discuss what types of levers,…
Risk Accelerators in Disasters
2014
Published version of a chapter in the book: Advanced Information Systems Engineering. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07881-6_2 Modern societies are increasingly threatened by disasters that require rapid response through ad-hoc collaboration among a variety of actors and organizations. The complexity within and across today's societal, economic and environmental systems defies accurate predictions and assessments of damages, humanitarian needs, and the impact of aid. Yet, decision-makers need to plan, manage and execute aid response under conditions of high uncertainty while being prepared for further disruptions and failures. This paper argues tha…
The ethical narrative in the sensemaking process : a case study of three hospital teams
2017
This thesis deals with the construction of meaning in the workplace, favoring the continuation, or the resumption, of the ongoing activity within organizations (Weick, 1969-2009). More specifically, it seeks to link the perspective of sensemaking to ethics. It is mainly based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with three hospital teams. After discussing the near-absence of analyses of the ethical dimension of sensemaking (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014), we focused on ethical philosophies in order to account for the organizational behaviors described during the interviews and to conceptualize the empirical data. On the theoretical level, the main contribution of this th…
Challenges in academic commercialisation: a case study of the scientists' experiences
2017
This paper introduces findings from a 2-year commercialisation project, KnoPro, where a Finnish university and few life science companies together with a number of intermediary organisations searched for business opportunities for academic research. The data of this intensive case study are organised in narrative episodes in which the actors attached versatile meanings to commercialisation. The episodes illustrate how academics approach commercialisation from the research perspective without true commercial efforts. They prioritise research and teaching ahead of commercialisation which constitutes a challenge for commercialisation. According to this study, successful commercialisation neces…
Managerial understanding and attitudes towards beyond budgeting in Ukraine
2019
In order to find out how Ukrainian practitioners understand and evaluate management control innovation - beyond budgeting - this study examines their attitudes towards this concept and meanings they attach to it in the process of learning and sensemaking. Results show how the content and meaning of novel management innovation is reinterpreted and negotiated in new institutional context. Empirical evidences support the central statement of institutional theory, namely a replacement of practice's former technical functions by institutional facts, specific symbolic meanings and collective understandings. The findings reported serve to demonstrate the gradual replacement of brute facts and empi…