Towards a Sensemaking View of Organizational Decision-Making

Elsahn, Ziad and Benson-Rea, Maureen (2015) Towards a Sensemaking View of Organizational Decision-Making. Academy of Management Proceedings. ISSN 0065-0668

Abstract

We propose a process model of organizational decision-making that integrates sensemaking and choice processes, which are usually decoupled in the sensemaking and decision-making literature. We argue that a sensemaking approach to decision-making can shed light not only on how decisions are made, but also on the process of meaning-making and on how organizations enact and make sense of their environment. We argue that such approach is shaped by three determinants (External and internal triggers, firms’ attention structures, and firms prior experience and knowledge) that interact to explain different decision-making trajectories by which decision-makers engage in sensemaking processes to construct shared interpretations that guide their choice processes.