Ian Colville

Making Sense of Sensemaking in Organization Studies

‘Sensemaking’ is an extraordinarily influential perspective with a substantial following among management and organization scholars interested in how people appropriate and enact their ‘realities’. Organization Studies has been and remains one of the principal outlets for work that seeks either to draw on or to extend our understanding of sensemaking practices in and around organizations. The contribution of this paper is fourfold. First, we review briefly what we understand by sensemaking and some key debates which fracture the field. Second, we attend critically to eight papers published previously in Organization Studies which we discuss in terms of five broad themes: (i) how sense is made through discourse; (ii) the politics from which social forms of sensemaking emerge and the power that is inherent in it; (iii) the intertwined and recursive nature of micro-macro sensemaking processes; (iv) the strong ties which bind sensemaking and identities; and (v) the role of sensemaking processes in decision making and change. Third, while not designed to be a review of extant literature, we discuss these themes with reference to other related work, notably that published in this journal. Finally, we raise for consideration a number of potentially generative topics for further empirical and theory-building research.

Reconstructing "behavioural accounting"

Abstract This paper adopts a critical stance towards behavioural accounting research methodology. It is argued that most accountants have based their behavioural research on the natural scientific approach, a paradigm whose relevance and suitability for conducting social research has been increasingly questioned in recent years. The author discusses some alternatives to the positivistic research methodology of the natural sciences as a way of developing social science and the implications these have for providing a coherent theoretical and methodological perspective for future “behavioural accounting” research. It is the contention of this paper that the study of the behavioural aspects of accounting has largely failed to develop into a coherent theoretical or practical body of knowledge. In an attempt to overcome this state of affairs, there is an increasing trend to employ organizational and sociological theory as a basis for research, as opposed to psychology and social psychology which informed earlier conceptual thinking and research. While accountants may see this conceptual development as an advancement in that it locates accounting processes in their organizational and social contexts, the way in which it is being conducted is criticized in this paper because, like psychology, it is characterized by an essentially positivistic methodology. This article will first provide a broad overview of the relationship between accounting research and the behavioural sciences. From that overview it will be argued that accounting researchers are unlikely to make much progress by borrowing behavioural scientific concepts unless they develop a deeper understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of these concepts and the competing schools of methodological thought which exist within the behavioural sciences. In an attempt to fill this apparent gap in understanding, the paper will discuss the scientific approach of the natural sciences, why it is felt to be inappropriate for the behavioural sciences and what alternatives exist.

Simplexity: Sensemaking, organizing and storytelling for our time

Simplexity is advanced as an umbrella term reflecting sensemaking, organizing and storytelling for our time. People in and out of organizations increasingly find themselves facing novel circumstances that are suffused with dynamic complexity. To make sense through processes of organizing, and to find a plausible answer to the question ‘what is the story?’, requires a fusion of sufficient complexity of thought with simplicity of action, which we call simplexity. This captures the notion that while sensemaking is a balance between thinking and acting, in a new world that owes less to yesterday’s stories and frames, keeping up with the times changes the balance point to clarifying through action. This allows us to see sense (making) more clearly.

Organizing to Counter Terrorism: Sensemaking amidst dynamic complexity

Organizations increasingly find themselves contending with circumstances that are suffused with dynamic complexity. So how do they make sense of and contend with this? Using a sensemaking approach, our empirical case analysis of the shooting of Mr Jean Charles de Menezes shows how sensemaking is tested under such conditions. Through elaborating the relationship between the concepts of frames and cues, we find that the introduction of a new organizational routine to anticipate action in changing circumstances leads to discrepant sensemaking. This reveals how novel routines do not necessarily replace extant ones but, instead, overlay each other and give rise to novel, dissonant identities which in turn can lead to an increase rather than a reduction in equivocality. This has important implications for sensemaking and organizing amidst unprecedented circumstances.

Organizing, changing and learning: A sensemaking perspective on an ongoing ‘soap story’

This article adopts a sensemaking perspective to explore changing and learning in an organization that has been making the same product for more than 175 years. Using an insider/outsider methodology, this case provides evidence of dynamic, ongoing processes of changing and learning across time, albeit without formal change intervention. We conclude that organizational becoming, learning and change are found in the juxtaposing of order and disorder, frames of past learning and cues of present action. This balance between the past and emerging present is advanced as a way of seeing organizational learning, which is sensitive to process and time.

The social process of research: Some reflections on developing a multi-disciplinary accounting project

Abstract Description of empirical research often gives the impression that researchers merely consider a list of possible standard techniques, select the appropriate one for their work and slavishly follow it to derive a conclusion. This paper discusses possible pressures which bring about this emphasis in the literature and argues that this brushes aside the more interesting, challenging and stimulating aspects of research activity. It is emphasised that research activity has a social process and has management problems just as any other human organisation has. The arguments are illustrated by a very comprehensive description of a multi-disciplinary project involving research on financial control in a large local authority.

Sensemaking processes and Weickarious learning

The processes by which people learn to make sense and make sense to learn is of both theoretical and practical importance. In a world suffuse with dynamic complexity in which unusual, unexpected and unprecedented events occur on a persistent basis, this challenges the relevance of the sensemaking perspective. We put forward a rebalanced model of sensemaking to make the sensable once again sensible, and open up the sensemaking perspective to understand learning as a process that is more than mere interpretation and attends to embodied sensemaking through adopting a thorough-going process approach. This way, we extend both the grasp and the reach of the sensemaking perspective to make sense of learning and to learn to make sense.

Managing tax regimes: a call for research

Most academic research on taxation relates to higher-level issues of fiscal policy. Much public debate takes place about the calculation and incidence of different taxes, but little academic research addresses the management problems that are specific to national taxation regimes. This paper identifies emerging issues and calls for joint practitioner/academic attention on an international basis to address these issues.

A tragedy of understanding; accounting for ontological security

There is a scene in a play by Euripides in which Medea, the central character, persuades Jason, her husband, to be the unwitting participant in her plot for revenge. This scene illustrates a facet of finance and accounting expertise because it shows how narrative, including finance and accounting, provides ontological security; a belief in the security of reality and the predictability of outcomes. The Chorus in the play suggests that Jason is “so sure of destiny”. What makes the scene particularly interesting is that it carries a second meaning, which is absolutely clear to the audience, and which has tragic consequences, of which Jason is “so ignorant”. This possibility of a second meaning suggests dangers in accepting a superficial understanding of any narrative. In turn, this shows the need for a knowledge of the history and characters from which any single scene, or finance and accounting report or calculation, is constructed. Provides quotations from practitioners which illustrate ways in which they see finance and accountancy as narrative and the ways in which they succeed and fail to imbue any accounting scene with characters and history.

Auditing cultural change

Any serious and ongoing attempt to bring about cultural change should be informed by an evaluation as to what, if anything, has changed. This auditing of cultural change is, however, a strangely neglected and difficult topic. This article addresses some of the difficulties by trying to find out, at the level of action, how things had changed for people drawn from the three main front‐line grades in the civil service within Customs and Excise.