Project managers' sensemaking in an unexpected event: Coping with stakeholded conflict in China

This paper examines the sensemaking processes leading to project managers' responses to an unexpected event in an international project setting. High uncertainty and unexpected events are prevalent in international projects conducted in challenging and complex environments. While the existing project management literature has distinguished various tactics used by project managers for responding to the unexpected events, of lesser attention have been the actual sensemaking processes underlying and producing these responses. Based on an in-depth analysis of two project managers' sensemaking in an unexpected event, this paper shows how such processes, even within the same project management team, can be highly subjective, leading to coexistence of multiple, highly disparate responses to the unexpected event. Furthermore, the paper argues that these processes not only reflect the formal, contractual network structure and boundaries between the project participants, but in fact create the coexistence of multiple, highly divergent systems of project structures, boundaries, and liabilities for coping with the unexpected event.