The Substance of Sensemaking

SUBSTANCE OF SENSEMAKING

            The following "vocabularies" form the "frames" and "cues" of sensemaking:

           

1.    Ideology:  Vocabularies of Society.  "Ideologies are defined as a 'shared, relatively interrelated set of emotionally charged beliefs, values, and norms that bind some people together and help them to make sense of their worlds' (p. 33)" (Weick, 1995, p. 111).  "Thus ideologies combine beliefs about cause-effect relations, preferences for certain outcomes, and expectations of appropriate behaviors" (Weick, 1995, p. 111). "Typically, these sources 'serve to make social situations comprehensible and meaningful. People naturally tend to simplify what they perceive; ideologies act to structure that simplification' (Trice & Beyer, 1993, p. 45)" (Weick, 1995, pp. 111-112).  The content of ideologies originates in such extraorganizational sources as transnational cultures, national cultures, regional and community cultures, industry ideologies, organization sets, and occupational ideologies (Weick, 1995, p. 112).

2.    Third-order Controls:  Vocabularies of Organization. 

Citing Perrow (1986), Weick (1995, p. 113), explains that “organizations operate with three forms of control: first-order control by direct supervision, second-order control by programs and routines, and third-order control consisting of assumptions and definitions that are taken as given.” “Third-order controls are called ‘premise controls,’ because they influence the premises people use when they diagnose situations and make decisions” (Weick, 1995, p. 113). “A premise is a supposition made so that people can get on with the process of decision making” (Weick, 1995, p. 115). “And it is this early influence, capable of coloring all subsequent steps, that affords much of the reason why premise control is so powerful” (Weick, 1995, p. 115).

3.    Paradigms: Vocabularies of Work.

“[P]aradigms can be defined as sets of current and quasi-standard illustrations that show how theories of action are applied conceptually, observationally, and instrumentally to representative organizational problems” (Weick, 1995, p. 120). Paradigms, in an organizational context, can include “standard operating procedures, shared definitions of the environment, and the agreed-upon system of power and authority [internal citations omitted]” (Weick, 1995, p. 118).“Collections of illustrations or stories, held together by a theory of action, provide a frame within which cues are noticed and interpreted” (Weick, 1995, p. 121). “There may be less agreement on the ‘theories of action’ than on the exemplars themselves” (Weick, 1995, p. 121).

4.    Theories of Action:  Vocabularies of Coping.

Weick (1995, p. 121), citing Hedberg (1981), states:

Theories of action ‘are for organizations what cognitive structures are for individuals.  They filter and interpret signals from the environment and the stimuli to responses. They are metalevel systems that supervise the identification of stimuli and the assembling of responses’[.]

Further, “‘[t]o identify stimuli properly and to select adequate responses, organizations map their environments and infer what causal relationships operate in their environments.  These maps constitute theories of action which organizations elaborate and refine as new situations are encountered’ (Hedburg, 1981, p. 7)” (Weick, 1995, p. 121).

5.    Tradition:  Vocabularies of Predecessors.

Weick (1995, p. 124), citing Shils (1981, pp. 12-13), understands tradition to mean “something that was created, was performed or believed in the past, or believed to have existed or to have been performed or believed in the past, and that has been or is being handed down or transmitted from one generation to the next.” “All kinds of images, objects, and beliefs can be transmitted as traditions” (Weick, 1995, p. 125).

6.    Stories:  Vocabularies of Sequence and Experience.

Stories, or narratives, provide a plausible frame for sensemaking (Weick, 1995, p. 128). Stories “gather strands of experience into a plot that produces [an] outcome” (Weick, 1995, p. 128). “The plot follows either the sequence beginning-middle-end or the sequence situation-transformation-situation” (Weick, 1995, p. 128).  Stories may be crucial for sensemaking because they facilitate diagnosis and reduce the disruption produced when projects are interrupted (Weick, 1995, p. 129).