Strategic sense-giving at the micro-level: facilitating and triggering coordinated action

Abstract

Collective, coordinated action allows a group to achieve results that are beyond the sum of individual efforts. How do executives help people to take coordinated actions? How do they influence the sense-making of the people to ensure that the group is able to act as a collective? To answer these questions, I carried out an in-depth study of a CIO's sense-giving tactics and identified how his sense-giving facilitates and triggers collective, coordinated action. Accordingly, this sense-giver creates both shared understanding and shared faith through specific micro-tactics, to increase 'collective action potential', which he then transforms to action by using specific triggering tactics. I abstract the sense-giving tactics used by the CIO and explain their theoretical mechanisms. Thus, I extend research on sense-giving and coordinated action.