Supporting Prospective Organizational Sensemaking with Collaborative Methods

When dealing with complex and ambiguous issues, people must interact, discuss and share their different perspectives and interpretations. Existing literature recognizes sensemaking as a way for group members to cope with complexity and to mediate (re)construction and co-construction of meaning. Despite the importance of developing a shared understanding in the organization, there have been surprisingly few research efforts seeking to support sensemaking in practice. To this end, this chapter first discusses the sensemaking perspective, its recent critique and suggestions for improving it. The sensemaking perspective is then applied in an attempt to support sensemaking in one case organization. The findings from the case study are reported, and the importance of material practices when supporting organizational sensemaking is raised.