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or team) can be said to be mindful, or have a mindfulness capability, the same way that
it is said that organisations learn or have learning capabilities [9].
In contrast to other studies of cognition in organisations, understanding activities
and organisations in terms of sensemaking and collective mindfulness takes us away
from the traditional decision-making lens. Traditionally decision making is explained as
a rational selection between options. Although seen as the combination of two processes
of judgement and choice, decision making is typically studied from an individual
(cognitive) perspective. The focus is often placed on the outcome (the judgment, the
decision). Instead, understanding sensemaking requires a dynamic perspective and a
focus on the (social) activity in context.
1.2. Making sense and âthe unexpectedâ
Sensemaking in organisations is about making sense of unusual events, ambiguous
information, or unexplained variations of performance. Organisations are complex
sociotechnical environments â they are open adaptive systems. Take for example the
implementation of a large clinical information system being rolled-out across multiple
hospitals. In such environments it is inevitable that new events and situations will appear
that could not have been anticipated, or were known to some but not made known to the
designers/implementers (also referred to as âunknown knownsâ [10]). These situations
create uncertainty and therefore require âmaking sense ofâ. This is what is usually
referred to as âthe unexpectedâ [8], although the expression may also be used more
generally to refer to any unwanted outcomes or issues (errors, accidents) in
organisational processes. Examples of the unexpected in an IT implementation project
may include agreed requirements that become contested, unanticipated changes in
workflows, or use of an IT system to complete work in ways which had not been
foreseen. The case below illustrates making sense of, and resolving the unexpected in an
IT initiative requiring the involvement of stakeholders, and processes of discovery and
negotiation â overall, a process of collective sensemaking.
In the organisational literature, depending on the perspective taken to understand the
making of sense in organisations, attention has been paid to activities of sense-giving
(attempts to influence othersâ interpretations), sense-breaking (when sense is âbreaking
downâ), or sense-exchanging (social negotiation), among others. We will return to some
of these in the case discussed below.
1.3. Methods used to research phenomena within this theoretical frame
Weick and Roberts explain that the word âcollectiveâ ârefers to individuals who act
as if they are a groupâ. This means they âinterrelate their actionsâ (and they do so âwith
more or less careâ) [4][p360]. Since its beginning, empirical research on collective
mindfulness has therefore attempted to capture these processes of interrelating, achieving
this with in-depth ethnographic case studies (e.g. [4]). This method is the most suitable
for capturing the dynamics of activities in context. In these studies, the unit of analysis
often shifts between individuals and groups [3], âsince only individuals can contribute to
a collective mind, but a collective mind is distinct from an individual mind because it
inheres in the pattern of interrelated activities among many peopleâ [4][p360].
Qualitative studies of this kind have made useful contributions to the original theory
by investigating these phenomena in very different organisational contexts. For example
V.LichtnerandJ.I.Westbrook /CollectiveMindfulnessandProcessesofSensemaking 101
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book Applied Interdisciplinary Theory in Health Informatics - Knowledge Base for Practitioners"
Applied Interdisciplinary Theory in Health Informatics
Knowledge Base for Practitioners
- Title
- Applied Interdisciplinary Theory in Health Informatics
- Subtitle
- Knowledge Base for Practitioners
- Authors
- Philip Scott
- Nicolette de Keizer
- Andrew Georgiou
- Publisher
- IOS Press BV
- Location
- Amsterdam
- Date
- 2019
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-1-61499-991-1
- Size
- 16.0 x 24.0 cm
- Pages
- 242
- Category
- Informatik