Making Sense of Sensemaking Process In the Face of Organizational Environment

Abstract

Modern organization theory suggests that external environment is central to the organizational phenomena. Similarly, sensemaking is widely used to describe organizational actors and processes. Despite this significance of both constructs and their suggested interwoven occurrence in organizational landscape, sensemaking processes in the face of different types of organizational environments have not been studied. This paper furnishes a framework to describe which forms of sensemaking are useful in various types of organizational environment. At first, based on review of literature, we synthesized that sensemaking is a multifaceted process; which is retrospective as well perspective and continues as well as episodic. Moreover, it involves both individual and social cognition, and hence becomes individual as well organizational process. Subsequently, we have presented propositions regarding sensemaking processes in the face of simple, complex, dynamic and stable environments.