Micro-level product-market dynamics: Shared knowledge and its relationship to market development

This work draws on consumer and psychology research to explain sociocognitive aspects of product-market dynamics at a higher level of specificity than prior research. The authors extend the field’s understanding of market-shaping shared knowledge through a theory-informed discussion of how shared product knowledge comes to exist and how it changes as product markets develop. They define shared knowledge as the aspects of product representations that are common across the minds of market actors, making it possible for them to understand one another. The authors also discuss ways to track shared knowledge content that is expressed in market narratives. As the characteristics of shared knowledge are explained and linked to stages of product-market development, the authors develop a set of researchable propositions to guide future research. The theoretical arguments and propositions in this article complement extant marketing strategy research by integrating individual-level consumer theory with market evolution models. José Antonio Rosa (jose.rosa@case.edu; Ph.D., University of Michigan) is an assistant professor of marketing at Case Western Reserve University. His research interests include product markets as sociocognitive phenomena, embodied knowledge in consumer and managerial sensemaking, consumer illiteracy and coping, commitment and motivation among members of network marketing organizations, and buying group satisfaction. His research has been published in marketing and management publications, including theJournal of Marketing and theAcademy of Management Journal. Before entering academia, he worked in the automotive and information systems industries. Jelena Spanjol (jspanjol@tamu.edu; Ph.D., University of Illinois) is an assistant professor of marketing at Texas A&M University. Her research interests include product market dynamics, product portfolio management, innovation, sensemaking, and organizational and managerial cognition in marketing strategy. Her research has been published in marketing and management publications, including theJournal of Marketing and several book chapters. Before academia, she worked in the scientific software industry.     

Making sense of new technology during organisational change

This article examines how employees interpret the use of various social media and web 2.0 technologies by managers of an organisation during a merger process. The article explores the way in which managers use technology to give sense to the merger process, the corresponding sensemaking of employees and also how employees make sense of the use of technology itself. The findings show that new media enables the sharing of emotional sense about organisational processes between managers and employees and places employees with different levels of involvement with the process and at different points in the organisational hierarchy on equal footing. In spite of this, employees view the use of technology negatively and feel mastered by the technology itself. In discussing these unintended consequences of the use of this technology, the article further discusses the paradoxes that emerge from using new technology to give sense during organisational change.     

Reflexive Organizing for Knowledge Sharing: An Ethnomethodological Study of Service Technicians

This study examines how organizing is done reflexively through practice in the context of knowledge sharing. Organizing concerns reduction of equivocality and sensemaking so that actions can be interpreted and coordinated. Reflexivity refers to the fact that this organizing is done through talk, and that talk is an action that requires organizing. To examine how this reflexive organizing is accomplished, detailed analysis of video‐recorded interactions among photocopier service technicians revealed various interactional methods to make actions of requesting and offering assistance understandable and relevant. To explain these methods, Goffman's concept of embedding is applied. By embedding other social situations in the current talk, one can project a certain sense of one's talk. This reflexive organizing clarifies that organizing is part of, not separate from, any practice and that knowledge sharing is accomplished not through a retrospective narrative but through reflexive construction of the situation in which talk is made possible.     

Acting Intuition into Sense: How Film Crews Make Sense with Embodied Ways of Knowing

This study contributes to a holistic understanding of sensemaking by going beyond the mind–body dualism. To do so, we focus analytically on a phenomenon that operates at the nexus of mind and body: intuition. By observing four film crews, we unpack how people act their intuition into sense – that is, how they transform, through action, an initial sense (intuition) that is tacit, intimate, and complex into one that is publicly displayed, simpler, and ordered (i.e., a developed sense). Our model identifies two sensemaking trajectories, each of which involves several bodily actions (e.g., displaying feelings, working hands-on, speaking assertively). These actions enable intuition to express a facet of itself and acquire new properties. This study makes three important contributions. First, it develops the holistic-relational character of sensemaking by locating it in the relations among multiple loci (cognition, language, body, and materiality) rather than in each one disjunctively. Second, it theorizes embodied sensemaking as a transformative process entailing a rich repertoire of bodily actions. Third, it extends sensemaking research by attending to the physicality and materiality of language in embodied sensemaking.     

Investor perceptions of CEO successor selection in the wake of integrity and competence failures: A policy capturing study

Research summary : Drawing on theory about signaling, sensemaking, and the romance of leadership, we extend inquiry on investors' perceptions of CEO succession following misconduct. Whereas past studies have treated misconduct monolithically, we examine failures of integrity and competence separately. Using a policy capturing methodology that isolates investors' decision making from potential confounds, we find that, following an integrity failure, investors perceive outside and interim successors positively but inside successors negatively. Following a competence failure, investors perceive outside successors positively but are ambivalent toward inside and interim successors. Our findings indicate that whether an act of misconduct was an integrity failure or a competence failure, and what type of successor the firm chooses, are important considerations when using CEO succession as a means to restore investor confidence. Managerial summary: Business headlines regularly feature episodes of organizational misconduct, such as product safety problems, environmental violations, employee mistreatment, and securities lawsuits, and their aftermath. In such scenarios, shareholders demand answers from the people at the top, even if those people were not directly responsible for the problem. As a result, companies often fire the CEO as a means to restore investor confidence. Does this work? It depends on the type of misconduct and who is the CEO's successor. Following a competence failure, investors welcome the appointment of an outsider, but they are indifferent to inside and interim successors. Following an integrity failure, shareholders greet outside and interim CEO successors favorably while frowning on the promotion of insiders. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effectual entrepreneuring: sensemaking in a family-based start-up

Abstract

In this paper we examine the microprocesses associated with a successful business established by two young brothers (16 and 18). The study is informed by recent processual approaches to entrepreneurship associated with effectuation theory and sensemaking. We also draw on literature related to personal dispositions, which are the basis of habitual behaviours. The empirical data are drawn from a longitudinal study of an unconventional family business which was created by the two brothers while still at school. Opportunities were created, rather than discovered, by optimizing limited familial resources during the early stages of start-up. We expand effectuation theory by demonstrating the role of sensemaking (enactment, selection and retention), familial influences on dispositions (habits, heuristics and routines) and experiential learning during the first three years of operation.     

Seeing the market: performative sensemaking and the case of advertising agencies and their clients

ABSTRACT

How do market intermediaries help other market actors see the market and their opportunities for action within it? This article introduces a theoretical framework of performative sensemaking to explore this question using the case of advertising agencies and their clients. Drawing on 12 months of participant observation and 81 interviews conducted across four general market American advertising agencies, the article illustrates how advertising practitioners provide their clients with visions of what the market is and what opportunities for action lie within it, developing advertising campaigns to match that vision. These performed accounts of the market are dynamically negotiated and socially embedded, reflecting the identities of the clients, their target audiences, and the intermediaries themselves. Because intermediaries dramaturgically perform these interpretations of the market for their client in micro-level interactions, they must also deal with contestation and negotiation over their visions of the market.     

Strategic concepts as micro‐level tools in strategic sensemaking

Research Summary: The purpose of this article is to illuminate the role of concepts in strategic sensemaking. Based on a longitudinal real‐time study of a city organization, we demonstrate how the concept of “self‐responsibility” played a crucial role in strategic sensemaking. We develop a theoretical model that elucidates how strategic concepts are used in meaning‐making, and how such concepts may be mobilized for the legitimation of strategic change. Our main contribution is to offer strategic concepts as a missing micro‐level component of the language‐based view of strategic processes and practices. By so doing, our analysis also adds to studies on strategic ambiguity and advances research on vocabularies. Managerial Summary: Our analysis helps to understand the role of strategic concepts, that is, specific words or phrases with established and at least partly shared meanings, in an organization's strategy process. We show how adopting the concept “self‐responsibility” helped managers in a city organization to make sense of environmental challenges and to promote change. Our analysis highlights how such concepts involve ambiguity that can help managers to establish common ground, but can also hinder implementation of specific decisions and actions if it grows over time. We suggest that under environmental changes, development of new strategic concepts may be crucial in helping managers to collectively deal with environmental changes and to articulate a new strategic direction for the organization.     

Sustainable development and profit? A sensemaking perspective on hybrid organisations and their founders

This article explores the sensemaking process of the individual entrepreneurs behind hybrid organisations that seek to both initiate environmental/social change and also generate profit. The work sheds light on how founders of six such organisations set-up initially in between 1978 and 1991 make sense of themselves and their firm and how this impacts on their business strategies. We examine the life-stories of these individuals to illuminate their perspectives on their experiences, motives and values. We suggest that both ambition and altruism motivate individuals to become involved in these firms, echoing the paradox of firms seeking both social change and value creation. The work enhances our understanding of both sensemaking theory and success factors for hybrid organisations and strategizing more broadly.     

When Employees Walk The Company Talk: The Importance Of Employee Involvement In Corporate Philanthropy

Although corporate philanthropy is often viewed as a vehicle for fostering employee commitment, research suggests that it does not always accomplish this goal. Drawing on theories on prosocial sensemaking and on social identity theory, I propose that involving employees in corporate philanthropy encourages more benevolent attributions for philanthropy, thereby promoting higher attitudinal and behavioral commitment. In Study 1, a field study with employees and supervisors in a chemical‐pharmaceutical firm, employee involvement in corporate philanthropy predicted higher attitudinal and behavioral commitment to the firm. In Study 2, a laboratory experiment, participants reported higher attitudinal and behavioral commitment to a company when it was described as involving employees in philanthropy. In both studies, benevolent attributions mediated the associations of employee involvement in philanthropy with both attitudinal and behavioral commitment. My research provides new insights for understanding the impact of corporate philanthropy on a particularly important group of stakeholders—employees—and shows how employee involvement may encourage insiders to act to improve the organization's external image. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.