This document discusses the concept of sensemaking, which refers to how people construct plausible interpretations when facing ambiguous situations. Sensemaking is prominent in conditions of uncertainty, unfamiliarity, disruption, or distributed action across multiple actors. It involves shaping a frame of reference, extracting cues, and constructing a gestalt or narrative to impose order. Context, prior experiences, and interests influence this process. The document provides examples of sensemaking around crises like mad cow disease and emerging diseases. It also discusses how information systems can support sensemaking during disasters and uncertainty.

1. Making Sense of it All Chris Ansell Professor, Dept. of Political Science University of California, Berkeley

2. “ Sensemaking is a diagnostic process directed at constructing plausible interpretations of ambiguous cues that are sufficient to sustain action.” (Weick, 2007, 57).

3. “ When assessing the severity of a disaster and the relief that is needed, people face problems of ambiguity and equivocality. Sensemaking describes the resources that influence how well people can handle these problems, which can be a starting point for designing supporting IS.” (Muhren and Van de Walle 2009, 8)

4. Sensemaking is prominent when or where: ● Uncertainty or ambiguity are high ● The situation is unfamiliar or where existing routines, habits, or rules do not guide action ● Action is distributed across multiple actors and where “authoritative” interpretation is not possible. ● The situation is different than expected, or when events or situations appear unintelligible or confusing ● There is an interruption or disruption in projects or routines

5. FRAME OF REFERENCE CUE EXTRACTION “ GESTALT” CONSTRUCTION A Basic Sensemaking Model FLOW OF INFO & EVENTS

6. What Shapes Frame-of-Reference? ● Professional Lenses ● Prior Experience ● Expectations ● Organizational Identity or Culture ● Projects ● Extenuating Interests ● Beliefs or Ideology

7. Cue Extraction ● Noticing and Bracketing (selective attention) ● Often backward-looking (retrospective), but could be forward-looking ● Extracted cues are “seeds from which people develop a larger sense of what may be happening” (Weick 1995, 50). (e.g., they define a point of reference). ● Which cues are extracted and the meaning given to them will depend on context (we tend to notice “discrepancies” in a given context). ● Cues extracted may have a symbolic or political import (e.g., they may be legitimating).

8. “ Gestalt” Construction ●“ People organize to make sense of equivocal inputs and then enact this sense back into this world to make that world more orderly.” (Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 2005, 414). ● Pattern recognition or construction of narratives: development of “plausible stories.” ●“ Sensemaking is about the embellishment and elaboration of a single point of reference or extracted cue. Embellishment occurs when a cue is linked with a more general idea” (Weick 1995, 57).

9. CONTEXT “ Mad Cows” WHO GETS MOBILIZED? “ Veterinary Scientists” FRAME OF REFERENCE “ Animal Health Problem” GESTALT CONSTRUCTION “ Scapie in Cows” EXTENUATING INTERESTS & IDENTITIES “ Protecting British Agricultural Interests” CUE EXTRACTION “ Analysis of brain tissue” Sensemaking in the UK’s Response to BSE

10. Context 1 “ Patients with Unusual Symptoms” Who Gets Mobilized? CDC, NY DOH Gestalt Construction “ St. Louis Encephalitis” (SLE) Discrepant Cues “ Mixed Evidence” “ Birds don’t die of SLE” Context 2 “ Birds Dying” Who Gets Mobilized? “ Zoo Pathologist” Distributed Sensemaking: West Nile Virus Gestalt Construction “ Animal-Human Connection”

11. Sensemaking and Organizational Resilience Organizational Resilience -Temporary team with weak mutual knowledge & trust Sensemaking -”10 O’Clock Fire”

12. Information and Decision Support for Sensemaking (Muhren and Van de Walle) ● Support conversations via real-time communications ● IS can help to support a sense of shared identify among users ● IS can help identify salient cues by providing historical data ● Continuous situational updates can provide for stable sense of what is going on ● IS can help to support an exchange of interpretations

13. Karl Weick. 2005. “Managing the Unexpected: Complexity as Distributed Sensemaking,” in McDaniel and Driebe (eds.), Uncertainty and Surprise in Complex Systems . UCS 4: 51-65. Karl Weick. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations . Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. References Gary Klein. 1999. Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Karl Weick, Kathleen Sutcliffe, and David Obstfeld. 2005. “Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking,” Organization Science , 16, 4: 409-421. Karl Weick. 1993. “The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 38, 4: 628-652. Willem Muhren and Bartel Van de Walle. 2009. “Sensemaking and Information Management in Humanitarian Disaster Response: Observations from the TRIPLEX Exercise,” Proceedings of the 6 th Annual ISCRAM Conference.