Rethinking Sensemaking: Tools and Techniques for Organizing | 2026
Authors: Kuiken B.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-11631-4
Journal: Rethinking Sensemaking: Tools and Techniques for Organizing
Year: 2026
Publisher: Springer Nature
Document Type: Book
Open Access: All Open Access; Gold Open Access
Cited by: 1
Sensemaking has become an essential concept for understanding how organizational members navigate uncertainty and complexity. It is widely regarded as a key capability for enabling collective action and informed decision-making in unpredictable environments. Yet, despite its popularity, the sensemaking perspective has become increasingly fragmented. Without re-examining its philosophical and conceptual foundations, there is a growing risk that sensemaking will collapse into conventional cognitive models of interpretation – models that are ill-suited to the complex, fluid realities of contemporary organizations. Rethinking Sensemaking undertakes a systematic and critical inquiry into some of the core assumptions that underpin sensemaking theory and practice. Drawing on insights from philosophy, it develops an alternative understanding of sensemaking as a relational, embodied, and dynamic process of organizing. Building on this reorientation, the book introduces a set of conceptual tools and practical techniques designed to support organizing under conditions of ambiguity and change. It will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in organization studies and management, as well as to leaders seeking a more nuanced approach to organizational sense and action. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.
Philosophical aspects; Cognitive model; Collective action; Conceptual foundations; Decisions makings; Informed decision; Organisational; Sense making; Tools and techniques; Uncertainty and complexity; Unpredictable environments; Decision making