Introduction to Organizational Epics and Sagas: The Mythologization of Organization

Organizations are processes that bring together ‘ongoing interdependent actions into sensible sequences i.e. generat[ing] sensible outcomes’ (Weick, 1969/1979, p. 3). These processes are cycles related to each other as three consecutive stages in the form of loops. Enactment, the first stage, consists of the bracketing out a segment of the environment and realizing it through actions. The next stage is selection, where a reduction of ambiguity takes place though the framing of actions by the cognitive schemes. At the last stage, retention, the cognitive schemes keep the effects of the former two stages. The process of organizing embraces active and perpetual sensemaking, as well as concrete actions (Weick, 1995). Therefore it can always be seen as tentative and exploratory, even if it is based on previously retained experience. Barbara Czarniawska (1998) proposes that sensemaking is to interpretation what uncertainty is to probability. Interpretation is about the choosing of frames from a set of possible ones (like probability), while with sensemaking there is no such predetermined set and in that sense it is always potentially novel (like uncertainty). In practice, processes of organizing usually develop according to patterns based on previous experience stored in the cognitive schemes of the organizers. These patterns, taken together, emerge as the leading idea of the organization, which sometimes it attempts to express through its mission, strategy or main standards. The leading idea provides the participants with motivation and imaginative power.