TY - JOUR

T1 - On the Making of Sense in Sensemaking

T2 - Decentred Sensemaking in the Meshwork of Life

AU - Introna, Lucas D.

N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Organization Studies, 40 (5), 2019, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2019 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Organization Studies page: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/oss on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/

PY - 2019/5/1

Y1 - 2019/5/1

N2 - This paper proposes and argues for sensemaking practices as fundamentally decentred. Sensemaking has been, at least since the late 1980s, an enduring subject for organisation studies researchers, and much longer for organisational practitioners. This research tradition has, however, tended to have a particular understanding of temporality (as divisible), tended to be centred on the human sense-makers, and privileged as more valid that which can be made present, through deliberative sensemaking practices, at the expense of that which is absent, and perhaps ineffable. In short, by locating sensemaking in the deliberative sensemaking practices of humans other significant constitutive conditions of sensemaking became obscured from view. The main thrust of the paper is to develop a notion of sensemaking that is decentred – not simply at the disposal of human subjects – and where sense is always and already given and made simultaneously. That is, where every human attempt at framing is itself already enframed, significantly. We show how this reimagining of sensemaking, as decentred, has the potential to open up new avenues of research in sensemaking practices – avenues that are more sensitive to temporal flow, the more-than-human, immanence, and the precarity of such practices. This shift is significant theoretically but also practically.

AB - This paper proposes and argues for sensemaking practices as fundamentally decentred. Sensemaking has been, at least since the late 1980s, an enduring subject for organisation studies researchers, and much longer for organisational practitioners. This research tradition has, however, tended to have a particular understanding of temporality (as divisible), tended to be centred on the human sense-makers, and privileged as more valid that which can be made present, through deliberative sensemaking practices, at the expense of that which is absent, and perhaps ineffable. In short, by locating sensemaking in the deliberative sensemaking practices of humans other significant constitutive conditions of sensemaking became obscured from view. The main thrust of the paper is to develop a notion of sensemaking that is decentred – not simply at the disposal of human subjects – and where sense is always and already given and made simultaneously. That is, where every human attempt at framing is itself already enframed, significantly. We show how this reimagining of sensemaking, as decentred, has the potential to open up new avenues of research in sensemaking practices – avenues that are more sensitive to temporal flow, the more-than-human, immanence, and the precarity of such practices. This shift is significant theoretically but also practically.

KW - Bergson

KW - flow

KW - Heidegger

KW - Ingold

KW - Mann Gulch

KW - mood

KW - sensemaking

KW - temporality

U2 - 10.1177/0170840618765579

DO - 10.1177/0170840618765579

M3 - Journal article

VL - 40

SP - 745

EP - 764

JO - Organization Studies

JF - Organization Studies

SN - 0170-8406

IS - 5

ER -