Emergent Properties of Organizational Sensemaking Systems: A Grounded Theory Assessment of The HITEC Project

Abstract

The process of organizational sensemaking initially attracted empirical attention as a tool for retrospectively assessing organizational decision-making during critical incidents (Weick, 1988, 1993). However, recent advancements in multilevel theory design have created an opportunity to re-envision organizational sensemaking not only as an individual and retrospective process but as a broader macro-cognitive and multilevel organizational system. The identification and intentional design of organizational sensemaking systems can potentially facilitate present and future decision-making processes and organizational change management. Using the organizational sensemaking systems paradigm proposed by Hughes, et al. (2022), this study builds on the inductive assessment of a significant organizational change effort to extract novel theoretical propositions of the emergent properties of organizational sensemaking systems. Results include the identification of properties of organizational sensemaking systems and a series of theoretical propositions about the nature of sensemaking emergence. The potential implications for change management practice and future empirical work are discussed.