دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی فرآیندهای تخیل توزیع شده در معنابخشی تغییر سازمانی - امرالد 2018

Abstract

Purpose – The role of imagination (Gioia et al., 2002; Weick, 1995, 2005, 2006) and the potential of distributed sensemaking (Weick et al., 2005) are highlighted in existing sensemaking studies in a distinct manner. The purpose of this paper is to articulate these two perspectives by observing a specific sensemaking process defined as “distributed imagining process (DIP)” in this paper. Design/methodology/approach – From an observation conducted in 2016 within a French public organization regarding an operation that invited all organizational actors to imagine the future of their work life, this study analyzed 777 collected texts, through an inductive and qualitative approach, for understanding DIP’s functioning and results. Findings – This study identified that what actors imagine about the future is a self-contextualized observation and an interpretation of the present incorporated into an imagined future. With a distributed modality, individual imagining processes might interact with collective processes for contributing organizational change sensemaking. Originality/value – Adopting a temporality that positions the future as an imagined interpretative prolongation of the present and the past (Gioia et al., 2002), this study suggests that the combination of self-contextualized imagining process and distributed modality might be inspiring for exploring more inductive and enriched organizational sensemaking through, on the one hand, the reduction of cognitive constraints implicitly imposed by organizational and temporal contexts and, on the other hand, the incitation of interactions in and between individual and collective sensemaking processes.

Discussion and conclusion

This study tries to explore, conceptually and empirically, how an imagining process based on distributed modality functions in sensemaking and what potential contributions this process could provide to organizational change sensemaking. It proposes a possible conceptual understanding of DIP sensemaking, based on a review of the existing research related to a Weickian sensemaking model (Weick, 1988, 1993; Weick et al., 2005). In its analytical framework, this study also integrates a temporal dimension (articulating the imagined future and the perceived present) in the sensemaking process analysis. According to this study, DIP sensemaking processes could be understood as retrospective processes if the imagined future is considered as a prolonged representation of the present. What actors imagine about the future is a self-contextualized interpretation of the present and even of the past. This understanding implies that DIP sensemaking might constitute a means for understanding highly uncertain situations at the present, as in the case of strategic transformational change, through articulations between the imagined future and the perceived present as well as between individual sensemaking and organizational sensemaking.