Sensemaking

The teaching of organization theory and the conduct of organizational research have been dominated by a focus on decision-making and the concept of strategic rationality. However, the rational model ignores the inherent complexity and ambiguity of real-world organizations and their environments. In this landmark volume, Karl E Weick highlights how the `sensemaking' process shapes organizational structure and behaviour. The process is seen as the creation of reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves.

A FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE MONTH (APRIL 2017) Humans have become subservient to algorithms. Every day brings a new Moneyball fix - a maths whiz who will crack open an industry with clean fact-based analysis rather than human intuition and experience. As a result, we have stopped thinking. Machines do it for us. Christian Madsbjerg argues that our fixation with data often masks stunning deficiencies, and the risks for humankind are enormous. Blind devotion to number crunching imperils our businesses, our educations, our governments, and our life savings. Too many companies have lost touch with the humanity of their customers, while marginalising workers with arts-based skills. Contrary to popular thinking, Madsbjerg shows how many of today's biggest success stories stem not from 'quant' thinking but from deep, nuanced engagement with culture, language, and history. He calls his method sensemaking. In this landmark book, Madsbjerg lays out five principles for how business leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals can use it to solve their thorniest problems. He profiles companies using sensemaking to connect with new customers, and takes readers inside the work process of sensemaking 'connoisseurs' like investor George Soros, architect Bjarke Ingels, and others. Both practical and philosophical, Sensemaking is a powerful rejoinder to corporate groupthink and an indispensable resource for leaders and innovators who want to stand out from the pack.

Tanja Prinzessin zu Waldeck analyzes the effects of the composition of top management teams on their strategic sensemaking process. Based on the results of ten case studies, she shows that the diversity of experiences of team members supports the team to pick up strategically relevant environmental changes early and to develop a wide range of strategic alternatives. The author also indicates that the diversity of a team does not affect the speed with which teams come up with strategic decisions, but that speed appears to be influenced more by the personalities, leadership style, and culture in a top management team.

NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRODUCT- OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price Diagnoses the ills of the intelligence community. Describes the potential that sensemaking offers as a means precisely for helping policymakers to improve how they think about policy. Other related items: Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-020-01589-0 United States Congressional Serial Set, Serial No. 14876, Senate Report No. 301, U.S. Intelligence Community\'s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, Report of Select Committee on Intelligence is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/552-108-00074-4 Crafting an Intelligence Community: Papers of the First Four DCIs (Book and DVD) is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/041-015-00298-8 Interrogation: World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01017-0 Who Watches the Watchmen?: The Conflict between National Security and Freedom of the Press is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-020-01606-3"

Organizational change literature often focuses on the leaders role in giving sense to others of the need for change and there is a plethora of models and recipes on how to influence employees thinking about change, organizational design and performance. Notwithstanding this ready supply of advice, research has shown that up to 90% of change programs fail to deliver their expected outcomes. One of the reasons for this which has been neglected in the literature is that successful change in thinking starts with how leaders first make sense of the need for change and the challenges this poses to their own thinking. This book surfaces the elements behind leader sensemaking that add to or detract from their ability to critically question their current thinking. Leaders and interventionists have lacked practical and pragmatic advice on how to influence the process. This book is the culmination of 10 years of research spent working with leaders in organizations as they interpreted the need for change and made choices about engaging, or not, with transformational change methodologies. It reveals nine elements of sensemaking displayed by organizational leaders as they grapple with challenges to their current orthodoxies about how to lead and organize in times of change. The book shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of leadership, change, and organisational development.

This book presents sensemaking strategies to support security planning and design. Threats to security are becoming complex and multifaceted and increasingly challenging traditional notions of security. The security landscape is characterized as ‘messes’ and ‘wicked problems’ that proliferate in this age of complexity. Designing security solutions in the face of interconnectedness, volatility and uncertainty, we run the risk of providing the right answer to the wrong problem thereby resulting in unintended consequences. Sensemaking is the activity that enables us to turn the ongoing complexity of the world into a “situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard into action” (Weick, Sutcliffe, Obstfeld, 2005). It is about creating an emerging picture of our world through data collection, analysis, action, and reflection. The importance of sensemaking to security is that it enables us to plan, design and act when the world as we knew it seems to have shifted. Leveraging the relevant theoretical grounding and thought leadership in sensemaking, key examples are provided, thereby illustrating how sensemaking strategies can support security planning and design. This is a critical analytical and leadership requirement in this age of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity that characterizes the security landscape. This book is useful for academics, graduate students in global security, and government and security planning practitioners.

Process, Sensemaking, and Organizing is the first in a series of volumes which explore perspectives on process theories, an emerging approach to the study of organizations that focuses on (understanding) activities, interactions, and change as essential properties of organizations rather than structures and state - an approach which prioritizes activity over product, change over persistence, novelty over continuity, and expression over determination. Process and sensemaking may be seen as mutually interlocking phenomena and, as such, are cornerstones in process thinking, This volume brings together contributions from an international group of scholars energized by process organization studies. The collection offers perspectives from different disciplines, insights from diverse theoretical traditions and contexts, and parallels made with a range of cultural forms, including art, poetry, and cookery. At the same time, the chapters exhibit a clear emphasis on a process ontology, process theorizing, and narrative thinking. Across this rich and varied collection recurrent themes emerge that distinguish process theorizing from the more logico-scientific, variance-oriented research that dominates organization studies today. This book will appeal to academics, researchers, and graduate students in management, organization studies, and sociology who wish to better understand the emergent, changing, and flow-like character of organizational life and expand their understanding of the nature of sensemaking as a basis for organizing.

In this collection writing program and writing center administrators from a range of academic institutions come together to explore their work through the lens of sensemaking. Sensemaking is an organizational theory concept that enables institutions, supervisors, teachers, tutors, and others to better understand the work they do by using narrative, metaphor, and other theoretical lenses. The book is divided into two sections: Sensemaking with Tutors and Teachers, and Sensemaking and Institutional Structures. Chapter authors employ several theoretical approaches to sensemaking, ranging from individual experience to institutional history to document design, providing readers with ideas for how to administer and teach within their programs more effectively; how to advocate for their programs within larger university contexts; and how to positively influence the lives and careers of those they work with. Sensemaking for Writing Programs and Writing Centers theorizes daily experiences from working lives and suggests problem-solving strategies. Writing program administrators, writing department chairs, and writing center directors, tutors, and staff will find value in its pages.