Design as communication in micro-strategy — strategic sensemaking and sensegiving mediated through designed artefacts.

This paper relates key concepts of strategic cognition in microstrategy to design practice. It considers the potential roles of designers' output in strategic sensemaking and sensegiving. Designed artifacts play well-known roles as communication media; sketches, renderings, models, and prototypes are created to explore and test possibilities and to communicate these options within and outside the design team. This article draws on design and strategy literature to propose that designed artifacts can and do play a role as symbolic communication resources in sensemaking and sensegiving activities that impact strategic decision making and change. Extracts from interviews with three designers serve as illustrative examples. This article is a call for further empirical exploration of such a complex subject

Sharing news, making sense, saying thanks: patterns of talk on Twitter during the Queensland floods

Abstract: This paper examines the discursive aspects of Twitter communication during the floods in the summer of 2010–2011 in Queensland, Australia. Using a representative sample of communication associated with the #qldfloods hashtag on Twitter, we coded and analysed the patterns of communication. We focus on key phenomena in the use of social media in crisis communication: communal sense-making practices, the negotiation of participant roles, and digital convergence around shared events. Social media is used both as a crisis communication and emergency management tool, as well as a space for participants to engage in emotional exchanges and communication of distress.Authored by Frances Shaw, Jean Burgess, Kate Crawford and Axel Bruns

Guiding Organizations Through Transformational Change and Crisis

With sensemaking as a framework, the researcher used document analysis and semi-structured interviews to examine the main institutional logics, culture, and values used in communication from university leaders related to changes in response to crisis. Qualitative data from analysis of written communication from the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic and interviews with presidents and chief communication officers (CCOs) were consolidated to address the research questions: (1) What sensemaking strategies do university leaders employ to frame organizational events and actions? and (2) Are institutional logics and culture used within leadership communication related to university presidents’ framing of the change process, and if so, how are they related? Participants were limited to the presidents and chief communication officers of institutions within a large university system in the southern United States. Focused interviews with six university presidents and four CCOs and written communications from eight universities comprised the data set. The following conclusions were drawn from the findings: Through content analysis of 118 artifacts (presidential communication issued between March 2020 and June 2020), the researcher found eight individual codes used to communicate changes necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic: Health and Safety, Caring, Retention, Student Centered, Challenge, Change, Online Instruction, and Continuity of Learning. Interviews with university presidents and CCOs yielded data that coalesced in six themes: Caring, Change, Retention, Reaction, Values, and Sensemaking. In interviews, CCOs and presidents stated that they were aware of the presence of institutional values in leadership communication related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes it necessitated; however, the majority did not indicate that the inclusion of values and culture was conscious. The diagnostic data gathered in this study may be used in a prescriptive manner to craft communication related to changes in response to crisis. Based on the findings, concrete and actionable recommendations are provided on how to use sensemaking in communication to help stakeholders comprehend the necessary changes when crisis is encountered

Sarawak Digital Economy and the organisational sensemaking process of CSR: a conceptual view

The Sarawak Digital Economy (SDE) is an initiative that was recently implemented by the Sarawak Government in its effort to turn Sarawak into a high-income and developed State by year 2030. Based on this vision, the Sarawak Government has addressed the critical need for an effective collaboration with the local organisations. Since the early 2000s, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become one of the innovative mechanism used by governments of various localities to work with local organisations for the interest of the community. In some regions, CSR has been widely used as a platform to cope with the social challenges such as unemployment and poverty. Based on these common practices, it is reasonable for this study to anticipate the likelihood for similar mechanism of collaboration to take place in Sarawak especially in respective to the joint effort required between the Sarawak Government with the local organisations to ensure successful implementation of SDE. This perspective in turn, puts into emphasis the potential ‘trigger’ effect that SDE may impose on the affected local organisations, including its CSR activities and orientation. Henceforth, the need for this study to view the development and implementation of CSR in an organisation as a sensemaking process. In this respect, this article takes the pioneering step to put present a conceptual view of the organisational CSR sensemaking process, and rationalise as to how CSR should be analysed especially in the scope of Sarawak’s current economic plan and direction

Sensemaking reconsidered : towards a broader understanding through phenomenology

We develop a typology of sensemaking in organizations that reconsiders existing sensemaking research by providing a more coherent and integrative conceptualization of what defines sensemaking and how it is connected with organizing. Drawing on existential phenomenology, we make the following core claims: (1) sensemaking is not a singular phenomenon but comprises four major types: immanent, involved-deliberate, detached-deliberate, and representational sensemaking; (2) all types of sensemaking originate and take place within specific practice worlds; (3) the core constituents of sensemaking within a practice world (sense–action nexus, temporality, embodiment, and language) are played out differently in each type of sensemaking. Furthermore, we elaborate the links between sensemaking and organizing, focusing especially on the connections between types and levels of sensemaking, and the consequences of sensemaking outcomes for organizing. Finally, we discuss how the typology contributes to the existing sensemaking perspective, outline methodological implications, and suggest ways of advancing sensemaking research