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Sensemaking has become an essential concept for understanding how organizational members navigate uncertainty and complexity. It is widely regarded as a key capability for enabling collective action and informed decision-making in unpredictable environments. Yet, despite its popularity, the sensemaking perspective has become increasingly fragmented. Without re-examining its philosophical and conceptual foundations, there is a growing risk that sensemaking will collapse into conventional cognitive models of interpretation models that are ill-suited to the complex, fluid realities of contemporary organizations. Rethinking Sensemaking undertakes a systematic and critical inquiry into some of the core assumptions that underpin sensemaking theory and practice. Drawing on insights from philosophy, it develops an alternative understanding of sensemaking as a relational, embodied, and dynamic process of organizing.
Building on this reorientation, the book introduces a set of conceptual tools and practical techniques designed to support organizing under conditions of ambiguity and change. It will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in organization studies and management, as well as to leaders seeking a more nuanced approach to organizational sense and action.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction The Importance of Sensemaking for Organizations.- Chapter 2: From Sensemaking in to Sensemaking as Organizing The Evolution of Weicks Thought.- Chapter 3: Rethinking Sensemaking Critiques and Lines of Flight.- Chapter 4: Sensemaking and Time Toward a Radical Processual Ontology.- Chapter 5: Inquiry Meaning and Organizing A Pragmatist Take on Sensemaking.- Chapter 6: Sensemaking Practices Garfinkel and the Ethnomethodological Turn.- Chapter 7: Power and Sensemaking Contested Practices in Organizations.- Chapter 8: Sense Desire and the Fold A Deleuzian Perspective on Sensemaking.- Chapter 9: Toward a New Understanding of Sensemaking Tools and Techniques for Organizations.
About the author
Ben Kuiken is a self-employed organizational philosopher and consultant working at the intersection of philosophy and organizational practice. He is affiliated as guest researcher at Radboud University, Nijmegen. In his consulting practice, he invites leaders to reflect critically on the meanings and assumptions that shape the way they organize.
Summary
Sensemaking has become an essential concept for understanding how organizational members navigate uncertainty and complexity. It is widely regarded as a key capability for enabling collective action and informed decision-making in unpredictable environments. Yet, despite its popularity, the sensemaking perspective has become increasingly fragmented. Without re-examining its philosophical and conceptual foundations, there is a growing risk that sensemaking will collapse into conventional cognitive models of interpretation – models that are ill-suited to the complex, fluid realities of contemporary organizations. Rethinking Sensemaking undertakes a systematic and critical inquiry into some of the core assumptions that underpin sensemaking theory and practice. Drawing on insights from philosophy, it develops an alternative understanding of sensemaking as a relational, embodied, and dynamic process of organizing.
Building on this reorientation, the book introduces a set of conceptual tools and practical techniques designed to support organizing under conditions of ambiguity and change. It will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in organization studies and management, as well as to leaders seeking a more nuanced approach to organizational sense and action.
