Sensemaking Analysis

Sensemaking analysis studies how people in organizations turn confusing, ambiguous circumstances into accounts they can understand and act on. Karl Weick's 1995 book Sensemaking in Organizations defined the construct and its properties — sensemaking is grounded in identity, retrospective, enactive of the environments people then face, social, ongoing, focused on extracted cues, and driven by plausibility rather than accuracy. Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld's 2005 Organization Science article took stock of the concept, emphasizing that sensemaking is the activity through which organizing itself happens: people notice and bracket cues, label and categorize them, and act in ways that further shape the situation. Sally Maitlis's 2005 study added the social and political dimension, showing how leaders and stakeholders engage in sensegiving to influence others' interpretations, producing distinct forms of organizational sensemaking. As an analytic approach it is qualitative and interpretive, tracing meaning-construction through talk, narrative, and action.