This study examines how leaders make sense of an unsettled, contemporary issue facing
higher education. It deepens our understanding of how stories may operate in the process of
sensemaking, which has been described as “the experience of being thrown into an ongoing,
unknowable, unpredictable streaming of experience in search of answers to the question, ‘What's
the story?’” (Weick, 2008, para. 1). Sensemaking is a powerful tool for understanding how
people engage volatile issues.
The study addresses two research questions: How are Catholic university leaders making
sense of undocumented student access? and What role do stories play in the sensemaking of
these leaders? Situating the study in Catholic higher education, with its own unique history—
serving as a vehicle for assimilation into American society, especially for immigrants—allows us
to explore the spiritual and religious values that operate differently within this sector than
elsewhere in U.S. higher education. That the issue remains unsettled in policy and practice
highlights the effects of volatility on sensemaking.
To learn more about how leaders respond to the challenge of this situation, I conducted
55 interviews in 12 Catholic universities in regions of the U.S. with relatively high
undocumented populations. I find that identity, social context, extracted cues, and stories play
especially important roles in leader sensemaking. Leaders engaged in “constructing Catholic
identity,” a process of reflection upon the espoused mission values in their institutions which led
to the decision to admit undocumented students. Because of the volatility of undocumented
access and leaders’ fear of negative consequences resulting from engaging the issue, leaders
employed numerous behaviors to manage their commitment (Salancik, 1977). This resulted in
strategic ambiguity that provided some protection for leaders; it also led to communication
breakdowns in universities and the alienation of important institutional leaders.
Canonical stories played an important role in sensemaking, as leaders referred to
“community narratives” and “dominant cultural narratives” (Rappaport, 2000), often alluding to
them in shorthand. Because their meaning is shared among group members, canonical stories
were especially useful as leaders reflected on the link between institutional histories and
charisms and the decision to admit undocumented students.PhDHigher EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111516/1/djpcsc_1.pd
