Critical Sensemaking: Adventures in Application Albert Mills (SMU/UEF) With a little help from my friends Eeva Aroma, Maarit Lammassaari, Esa Hiltunen (UEF) Jean Helms Mills (JSB/SMU) What is Critical Sensemaking (CSM)? •The study of the sociopsychological processes and structural contexts through which a sense of organization is produced. ALBERT MILLS • ALBERT MILLS WAS BORN IN LONDON NOVEMBER 1945 - TO MARGARET AND ALBERT MILLS • HIS MOTHER DIED IN SCOTLAND OF TB IIN FEBRUARY 1948 • ALBERT SPENT THE PAST 70+ YEARS AS AN ONLY CHILD. • LATE LAST YEAR HE UNDERTOOK A DNA TEST GREGGOR MURRAY (FAKE NAME) • GREGGOR MURRAY WAS BORN IN SEPT. 1948. • HIS MOTHER ANNIE PUT HIM UP FOR ADOPTION • HE HAS SPENT MUCH OF HIS LIFE LOOKING FOR HIS PARENTS. • EARLIER THIS YEAR HE TOOK A DNA TEST. ON TUES JUNE 5 ALBERT RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING EMAIL Omg omg omg you have a brother!!!!! Congratulations! It has been confirmed today by Ancestry DNA and if you check your Ancestry account you will see it! how exciting!!!! How do you feel? Love Charlotte Xxxx HOW DO YOU FEEL THAT THE FOLLOWING WILL AFFECT ALBERT’S SENSEMAKING OF THE EVENT? • THE SHOCK TO HIS ONGOING SENSEMAKING. • HIS SENSE OF IDENTITY • THE CUES HE DRAWS ON TO DETERMINE HOW TO REACT TO THE SHOCK • THE (SOCIAL) SENSEMAKING OF OTHERS. • HIS ABILITY TO ENACT A SENSE OF THE SITUATION • THE PLAUSABILITY OF THE SENSE OF THE SITUATION • THE RETROSPECTIVE CHARACTER OF THE NEW SENSE • OTHER INFLUENCES The Trajectory of Sensemaking • In 1995, Karl Weick developed, what he called, “sensemaking” as an alternate approach for the understanding of the process of organizing. Instead of a focus on organizational outcomes, sensemaking provided insights into how individuals and organizations give meaning to events. The Trajectory of Sensemaking • Weick (1995: xi) views sensemaking as an alternative to conventional ways of looking at the process of organizing, describing it as “ a set of ideas with organizing possibilities”. Sensemaking provides a useful way of uncovering the social psychological processes that contribute to organizational outcomes, rather than focusing on the outcomes themselves. The Trajectory of Sensemaking • Sensemaking is about understanding how different meanings are assigned to the same event. As Weick explained, sensemaking is never-ending (but ongoing) and each new sensemaking event is triggered by uncertainty or ambiguity, which causes us to find meaning. Because sensemaking occurs as a result of a shock, or break in routine, the study of sensemaking during or as a result of an organizational crisis offers particular insight into the processes involved. The Trajectory of Sensemaking • Weick (1995) sets out a series of socialpsychological “properties” that allow the researcher to understand how organizational reality is produced as an outcome of individual (and collective) sensemaking. Sensemaking Properties • We are constantly engaging in making sense of our environment through the influence of seven interrelated properties. In addition to the ongoing nature of sensemaking, these properties include identity construction, retrospection, focused on extracted cues, driven by plausibility, enactive of the environment and social. Why Should We Care? • Nord & Fox, 1996, “The Individual in Organizational Studies: the Great Disappearing Act.” Questions generated: how does isomorphism morph; structuration get structured; discourse become discursive; praxis get practiced; actornetworks form; the local assumes localization; sex begats gender . . . Etc. Positivist Grounding • Those strengths are, however, limited by Weick’s paradoxical treatment of sensemaking as drawing on interpretive insights that are often times presented as grounded in a more positivist notion of epistemological certainty, i.e., that the sensemaking process can be somehow seen as grounded (or groundable) in scientific knowledge. • Weick’s approach is also limited by an under-focus on issues of power, knowledge, structure, and past relationships. CRITICAL SENSEMAKING (CSM) Need to understand sensemaking in structural and discursive contexts. (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) Properties as heuristic Organizational Rules (Mills & Murgatroyd, 1991) Formative Context (Unger, 1987) Foucauldian discourse (Foucault, 1979) The critical aspect refers to the various aspects of power embedded within the sensemaking process. Triangulation • A triangulation of methodologies (interpretism, poststructuralism, and critical theory) to provide different frames of reference that can simultaneously ground and problematize (what we call) critical sensemaking’s knowledge claims; second, by highlighting the heuristic as opposed to scientific character of the social psychological properties of sensemaking; and third, . . . by taking a “consciously reflexive” . . . approach that identifies the impossibility of “coming to a foundational set of epistemological standards [. . . ] while [maintaining] consistency with regard to the epistemological assumptions” we do deploy (Helms Mills et al., 2010, p. 181). Paradigmatic Shift: From Properties to Heuristic CSM differs from SM in 3 central ways: 1. Problematisation of “properties” and their evocation of real. We see SM as a heuristic or interpretive framework for understanding the role of individual aspects of sensemaking. 2. Concern with power differentials in the SM process. 3.Location of SM within context of structures (i.e. organizational rules), discourse (Foucault), and formative contexts (Unger). ONGOING SENSEMAKING • Weick invents the term “ongoing sensemaking” to capture the idea that we are always making sense and that ongoing sense is largely habitual (Berger and Luckmann, 1967). • It is when there is a “shock” or interruption that the process of SM needs to be understood • Draws attention to how an ongoing sense is disrupted and maintained. • CSM focusses on the role of power in causing and managing certain disruptions and their repair. Retrospection • Weick contends that we act first and make sense afterwards. • This draws attention to the role of sensemaking in reality creation. • CSM asks, `how does power influence retrospection?’ Socially Speaking • For Weick the individual sensemaker is influenced in their choices through socialization and more immediate social interactions. CSM is interested in the differential power between sensemakers and other sources of powerful influences (e.g., formative contexts, discourse) The subject position is Identity Construction • Weick sees identity construction as one of seven key properties. Identity influences what we see – he sees it as largely cognitive. • CSM suggests that identity construction is second-most important aspect of SM but resides in interface between cognition, location and discursive position. • Topographical positioning by role, structure, discourse, or actor network may still depend on some scrap of enunciation, requiring some relationship to identity work. Getting in the Cues • According to Weick cues are part of the SM environment. We look for things to explain what we are seeing and give it meaning. • CMS links cues to structures, context, and discourse. Discursively Speaking - Is it Plausible? • Weick sees plausibility as an important SM property. If it is plausible , it makes sense. • CSM contends that this is the single-most important aspect of SM, namely, how can we make or prevent something from being plausible? [Issues of power and resistance. • Partly this may lie in discursive understandings (Thomas and Davies) but also in how something is enunciated (Ermarth), translated or enrolled (Latour). Performativity and Enactment • At the end of the day an act of sense is made, literally enacted. • CSM examines the role of power and resistance in the performance of enactment (e.g., the role of the media) Tales From the Field: Applied CSM Amy Thurlow Focus – the process of organizational change in a community college system and the merger of two hospitals. She was interested in how a sense of change is enacted and how this influences the experiences of those involved. Methodology: interviews, analysis of documents Analysis: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to study the interplay of practices and discursive influences. Findings: power embedded in the discourse of change and made plausible through reference to the language of change THURLOW • CSM – focusing on how individuals make sense of change in the context of structural factors – provides a way of analyzing “the relationship between discourse and agency in an attempt to connect the individual actions associated with change at the local level with the broader social discourse of change which operates on a global level” ROSALIE HILDA • Focus - the experiences of Hong Kong immigrants to Canada; how professional immigrants from Hong Kong to Canada make sense of their immigration experiences and how that can reveal why a substantial number leave in their first year in Canada. • Methodology – interviews and CDA of government documents to understand the interrelationship between “the local and formative contexts of sensemaking” • Findings revealed how a discourse of immigration served to influence how HK immigrants coped with the denigration of their own cultural experiences. ROSALIE HILDE Reflection: CSM is a useful approach for “studying the voice and reflections of immigrants to reveal some of the hidden discourses at play” and help to restore a greater sense of agency to those who are experiencing marginalization. On the other hand: it may be hard for novice researchers to master the wide range of elements and concepts in a short period of time’ Future research on immigrant sensemaking should focus on a sample with more successful voices to examine and compare their discursive activities in comparison. TAKING HARTT: CSM, History and the NONCorporeal Actant • Focus - explaining the role and production of history and how certain accounts of the past contribute to particular organizational practices and understanding . • Methodology: archival research of an airline company (Air Canada) and an exploration of the way that stories of the past are made sense of and developed through networks of relationships. CHRIS HARTT • History understood as a powerful sensemaking influence or NCA – produced through powerful networks of actors. • First, his work points out the instability of histories. He uncovered three strongly held and competing histories and how one succeeded over the others • Second, he conjectures that histories themselves could be nonembodied yet powerful actants (i.e., influences on human actors) • He argues that ANT and CSM work together to explain firstly how networked actors produce a sense of organization and secondly the role of agency in the formation of networks Shenoy-Packer: Making Sense of Microaggressions Focus: “the work realities of immigrant professionals (IPs) in the United States” with particular focus on the role of “microaggressions” and sensemaking strategies for dealing with them. she is interested in revealing the “what-is-not-being said” subtexts underlying dominant-nondominant communication” and how IPs navigate them. Methodology: interviews using two broad questions - “How do IPs experience microaggressions?” And “what sensemaking strategies do IPs use to navigate microaggression?” Shenoy-Packer Raises three key issues regarding agency and context. 1. the impact of shocks to the system caused by the perceived presence or increased presence of IPs and the reaction of insiders who try to make sense of the changes. Critical incident approach. 2. the insider-outsider dynamic to reveal the different potentials for agency in contexts of inherently “uneven power structures” on the “underlying power dynamics within discriminatory communicative spaces” 3. reminds us that agency more often than not occurs in situations of power. Thus, for Shenoy-Packer (2015) “CSM enables us to understand how individuals make sense of their environment at a micro/local level [while acknowledging] the entrenched power relations in their broader workplace/social/macro contexts.” SHENOY-PACKER • Makes us aware of the hidden aspects of sensemaking, i.e., aspects that may not be immediately obvious to the sensemaker = the “what-is-notbeing said subtexts underlying dominant-nondominant communication” (p. 271). • Microaggressions are indirect, possibly unintentional senses of a given situation; directing us to the role of confusion in the making of sense, leaving “the victim wondering, Did what I think happened, really happen? Was this a deliberate act or an unintentional slight? How should I respond.” • How we understand identity work and agency can involve cultural codes that also have to be learned as part of the sensemaking process, in the process `newcomers’ may be influenced through the development of a “learned helplessness” that may not be immediately obvious to the researcher studying sensemaking processes. Ruel: Multiplicity of I’s in Intersectionality • focuses on how there are so few science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) -professional women managers in the Canadian space industry. • Methodology – CDA, CSM • Research data includes participants’ narratives and stories gathered through unstructured interviews; analysis of a variety of participant emails and corporate publicly available reports, which are seen as an integral part of the data triangulation process. STEFANIE RUEL • Ruel emphasizes that the CSM framework provided her a way to tie together all parts of a complex theoretical apparatus, by making it possible to analyze an extensive range of anchor points, along with the social- and self-identities, and their relationship to rules, metarules, formative contexts, dominant ideas and practices, and sociopsychological processes. CSM: STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS With few exceptions, researchers who have adopted a CSM approach are drawn to the relationship between agency and power to analyse specific acts of sensemaking. Uncertainty whether there is a specific order in applying CSM. Ruel noted that “there was no need for an iterative – first, second, third – step function in applying CSM to the data in this research. She could easily work with the relationship between anchor points and CSM, independently from whether she was examining the relationship between anchor points and rules and formative contexts” . Relatedly, Hilde contends that the depth and width of CSM approach are both its strengths and its weaknesses. She continues that “researchers also need to deal with epistemological and ontological issues, and to make sense of whether the various natures of the diverse elements of the methodology are compatible with the problem at hand viz how do you adapt the sensemaking heuristic to a poststructural framework? CSM: STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS There are questions about how do we deal with sensemaking over time? Weick refers to retrospective sensemaking Hartt (2013a) argues that we need to consider the role of actor-networks and their relationship to the performance of sensemaking; that sensemaking possibilities are embedded in series of relationships. Harrt contends that powerful sets of recurring ideas such as tropes (or ways of thinking), beliefs (ways of seeing the world), and meta narratives (including history itself) become actants – non-corporeal actants - in their own right. Thus, history for example, can be viewed as a sensemaking outcome at one level (viz. a belief that `x’ occurred in the past) but also a way of thinking about the past that powerfully shapes our ability to make retrospect sense of the present and on prospective sensemaking. FURTHER INSIGHTS • CSM is an attempt to capture the individual sensemaker in context. The challenge has been to produce plausible accounts that are not centred in realism but which, nonetheless, recognise at least small `r’ realism in trying to capture a sense of the embodied actor. • The balance has been to capture a sense of the cognate being without centering cognition to strictly biological explanations. The idea then shifts to the notion of a decentred cognition, but cognition nonetheless, that is always in flux as the “individual” encounters a series of socially constructed activities and performances. • Finally there have been questions about the relationship between emotionality and how sense is made and the role of performativity. 12 ANGRY MEN • What is the central decision making process in the case? • What are the main social-psychological influences on the decision? • What are the main rules influencing the outcome? • What discursive influences are influencing the decision making process? • What broadly (formative) contexts are revealed in the decision making process?
