Sensemaking and Knowledge Management

Abstract

Sensemaking is presented as a distinctive and powerful view of what organizational knowledge is and what it is knowledge of that can usefully guide the design of knowledge management systems. Sensemaking is distinguished from the traditional, decisionmaking view of a manager which assumes that she faces an independently knowable environment and prospectively chooses courses of action in order to achieve certain purposes. Sensemaking, in contrast, assumes that a manager faces an equivocal situation and must retrospectively impose a sense of order on it. Sensemaking also assumes that the equivocal situations we encounter in organizational life are importantly the result of our own previous action. We present a case study of a knowledge management system in an international consulting firm showing how the behaviors of highly effective consultants reflect principles of sensemaking in their use of the system. We then develop implications for the design of knowledge management systems. ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR