IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eurman/v36y2018i3p306-318.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sensemaking in sensory deprived settings: The role of non-verbal auditory cues for emergency assessment

Author

Listed:
  • Svensson, Martin
  • Hällgren, Markus

Abstract

Emergency calls are high-stake situations characterized by volatile and time-critical conditions. The use of the telephone restricts sensory perception to a single modality—hearing—which makes both sensemaking and embodied sensemaking more difficult. Using observations, interviews, and organizational documents, we unveil how attention to the non-verbal cues of callers and their surroundings assists emergency operators to make sense of incoming calls for help. We find that operators use two practices to prioritize the calls: a frame-confirming practice and a frame-modifying practice. The practices are underpinned by configurations of verbal and non-verbal cues, wherein caller's emotional expressions and environmental sounds are both considered as distinct input. The non-verbal focus in this study extends our understanding of first-order sensemaking within the emergency domain but also in other sensory deprived settings in high-consequence industries. The contributions of this analysis to sensemaking research reside in the revelation that non-verbal cues contextualize and consequently frame the discursive elements of sensemaking. More specifically, this research offers the insight that embodies sensemaking benefits from attention being given to callers' non-verbal cues, rather than valuing only one's own bodily experiences and mere verbal descriptions about events.

Suggested Citation

  • Svensson, Martin & Hällgren, Markus, 2018. "Sensemaking in sensory deprived settings: The role of non-verbal auditory cues for emergency assessment," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 306-318.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:eurman:v:36:y:2018:i:3:p:306-318
    DOI: 10.1016/j.emj.2017.08.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237317301147
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.emj.2017.08.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joep P. Cornelissen & Saku Mantere & Eero Vaara, 2014. "The Contraction of Meaning: The Combined Effect of Communication, Emotions, and Materiality on Sensemaking in the Stockwell Shooting," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 699-736, July.
    2. Philippe Monin & Eero Vaara, 2010. "A Recursive Perspective on Discursive Legitimation and Organizational Action in Mergers and Acquisitions," Post-Print hal-02312439, HAL.
    3. Eero Vaara & Philippe Monin, 2010. "A Recursive Perspective on Discursive Legitimation and Organizational Action in Mergers and Acquisitions," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(1), pages 3-22, February.
    4. Julia Balogun & Claus Jacobs & Paula Jarzabkowski & Saku Mantere & Eero Vaara, 2014. "Placing Strategy Discourse in Context: Sociomateriality, Sensemaking, and Power," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 175-201, March.
    5. Julia Balogun & Claus Jacobs & Paula Jarzabkowski & Saku Mantere & Eero Vaara, 2014. "Placing Strategy Discourse in Context : Sociomateriality, Sensemaking, and Power," Post-Print hal-02313123, HAL.
    6. Sally Maitlis & Scott Sonenshein, 2010. "Sensemaking in Crisis and Change: Inspiration and Insights From Weick (1988)," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 551-580, May.
    7. Joep P. Cornelissen & Saku Mantere & Eero Vaara, 2014. "The Contraction of Meaning : The Combined Effect of Communication, Emotions, and Materiality on Sensemaking in the Stockwell Shooting," Post-Print hal-02313191, HAL.
    8. Karl E. Weick & Kathleen M. Sutcliffe & David Obstfeld, 2005. "Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(4), pages 409-421, August.
    9. Karl E. Weick, 1988. "Enacted Sensemaking In Crisis Situations[1]," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 305-317, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kalkman, Jori Pascal, 2020. "Sensemaking in crisis situations: Drawing insights from epic war novels," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 698-707.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Genevieve Musca & Linda Rouleau & Caroline Facq-Mellet & Frédérique Sitri & Sarah de Vogüé, 2018. "From boat to bags: The role of material chronotopes in adaptive sensemaking," Post-Print hal-01928127, HAL.
    2. Genevieve Musca & Linda Rouleau & Caroline Mellet & Frédérique Sitri & Sarah de Vogüé, 2018. "From boat to bags: The role of material chronotopes in adaptive sensemaking," Post-Print hal-01975340, HAL.
    3. Eero Vaara & Andrea Whittle, 2022. "Common Sense, New Sense or Non‐Sense? A Critical Discursive Perspective on Power in Collective Sensemaking," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 755-781, May.
    4. Nora Meziani & Laure Cabantous, 2020. "Acting Intuition into Sense: How Film Crews Make Sense with Embodied Ways of Knowing," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(7), pages 1384-1419, November.
    5. Kari Jalonen & Henri Schildt & Eero Vaara, 2018. "Strategic concepts as micro‐level tools in strategic sensemaking," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(10), pages 2794-2826, October.
    6. Kalkman, Jori Pascal, 2020. "Sensemaking in crisis situations: Drawing insights from epic war novels," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 698-707.
    7. Gino Cattani & Daniel Sands & Joe Porac & Jason Greenberg, 2018. "Competitive Sensemaking in Value Creation and Capture," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(4), pages 632-657, December.
    8. Joep P. Cornelissen & Saku Mantere & Eero Vaara, 2014. "The Contraction of Meaning: The Combined Effect of Communication, Emotions, and Materiality on Sensemaking in the Stockwell Shooting," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 699-736, July.
    9. Julia Balogun & Jean M. Bartunek & Boram Do, 2015. "Senior Managers’ Sensemaking and Responses to Strategic Change," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 960-979, August.
    10. Giustiniano, Luca & Cunha, Miguel Pina e & Clegg, Stewart, 2016. "Organizational zemblanity," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 7-21.
    11. Julia Balogun & Claus Jacobs & Paula Jarzabkowski & Saku Mantere & Eero Vaara, 2014. "Placing Strategy Discourse in Context: Sociomateriality, Sensemaking, and Power," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 175-201, March.
    12. Carlos Martin-Rios, 2016. "Innovative management control systems in knowledge work: a middle manager perspective," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 181-204, May.
    13. Sarkar, Soumodip & Osiyevskyy, Oleksiy, 2018. "Organizational change and rigidity during crisis: A review of the paradox," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 47-58.
    14. Demir, Robert, 2014. "Strategic Activity as Bundled Affordances," Ratio Working Papers 243, The Ratio Institute.
    15. Belschak-Jacobs, G., 2018. "Organisational Behaviour and Culture," ERIM Inaugural Address Series Research in Management 105093, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam..
    16. Goretzki, Lukas & Reuter, Marek & Sandberg, Joanna & Thulin, Gabriella, 2022. "Making sense of employee satisfaction measurement – A technological frames of reference perspective," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(1).
    17. Bowman, Gary & Parks, Ryan W., 2024. "Between episodes of strategy: Sociomateriality, sensemaking, and dysfunction in a scenario planning process," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    18. Ronit Yitshaki & Fredric Kropp & Benson Honig, 2022. "The Role of Compassion in Shaping Social Entrepreneurs’ Prosocial Opportunity Recognition," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(2), pages 617-647, August.
    19. Jørgensen, Lene & Jordan, Silvia & Mitterhofer, Hermann, 2012. "Sensemaking and discourse analyses in inter-organizational research: A review and suggested advances," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 107-120.
    20. Mary Ann Glynn & Lee Watkiss, 2020. "Of Organizing and Sensemaking: From Action to Meaning and Back Again in a Half‐Century of Weick’s Theorizing," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(7), pages 1331-1354, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eurman:v:36:y:2018:i:3:p:306-318. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/115/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.