Sense‐making, sensemaking and sense making—A systematic review and meta‐synthesis of literature in information science and education: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Feb 18, 2024
The substrate-independence theory utilizes sensemaking techniques to provide cognitively based sc... more The substrate-independence theory utilizes sensemaking techniques to provide cognitively based scaffolds that guide and structure learning. Scaffolds are cognitive abstractions of constraints that relate to information within a system. The substrate-independence theory concentrates on the flow of information as the underlying property of the host system. The substrate-independence theory views social systems as complex adaptive systems capable of repurposing their structure to combat external threats by utilizing constructors and substrates. Constructor theory is used to identify potential construction tasks, the legitimate input and output states that are possible, to map the desired change in the substrate’s attributes. Construction tasks can be mapped in advance for ordered and known environments. Construction tasks may also be mapped in either real-time or post hoc for unordered and complex environments using current sensemaking techniques. Mapping of the construction tasks in r...
Over the last two to three years I have asked well over 100 audiences at conferences, in company ... more Over the last two to three years I have asked well over 100 audiences at conferences, in company workshops and academic seminars a simple question: “What spreads fastest in your organisation, stories of failure or stories of success? ” The inevitable answer is failure and there are good reasons for this. Over the millennia the human race has come to realise that being equipped with several stories of failure is far more valuable than a story of success. This implies that the common knowledge management focus on best practice is in effect contrary to natural practice; an attempt to impose an idealistic structured process onto the natural activity of learning and knowledge transfer
This paper presents a science based approach to knowledge management, and related aspects of rese... more This paper presents a science based approach to knowledge management, and related aspects of research in the fields of social and management science. The science of complex adaptive systems provides a structure within which we can understand high levels of uncertainty in which outcomes are inherently unknowable, but which can be understood and managed as evolutionary mechanisms. This requires a rethinking of risk management from probabilistic models based on possible outcomes, the an understanding of the degree of stability and volatility within the system. Cognitive science has transformed our understanding of how humans make decisions, challenging the model of human decision making as one of rational choices based on personal self interesting, to one based on matching patterns acquired through experience or narrative transfer. The scientific use of narrative, and its fragmented and fractal nature offers considerable potential to transform knowledge management practice, and researc...
Muchos ejecutivos se sorprenden cuando los enfoques sobre liderazgo que han sido exitosos fallan ... more Muchos ejecutivos se sorprenden cuando los enfoques sobre liderazgo que han sido exitosos fallan en situaciones nuevas, pero contextos diferentes exigen respuestas distintas. Antes de abordar una situacion, los lideres deben reconocer que contextos la definen y segun eso disenar sus acciones. Snowden y Boone han creado una nueva perspectiva sobre el liderazgo y la toma de decisiones, que se basa en la ciencia de la complejidad. El resultado es el marco Cynefin, que ayuda a los ejecutivos a abordar los problemas segun cinco contextos. Los contextos simples se caracterizan por la estabilidad y relaciones de causa y efecto claras para cualquiera. A menudo la respuesta correcta es autoevidente. En este reino donde ?se sabe lo que se sabe?, los lideres deben percibir los hechos de una situacion, categorizar y responder. Los contextos complicados pueden contener muchas respuestas correctas, y aunque hay una clara relacion entre causa y efecto, no todos pueden verla. Es el reino donde ?se sabe lo que no se sabe?. Aca los lideres deben percibir, analizar y responder. En los contextos complejos, es imposible hallar respuestas correctas; mas bien, los patrones instructivos emergen si el lider realiza experimentos donde se puede fallar sin riesgo. Es el reino donde ?no se sabe lo que no se sabe?, donde hoy operan muchas de las empresas. En este contexto los lideres deben sondear, percibir y responder. En un contexto caotico, buscar respuestas correctas es inutil. Las relaciones entre causa y efecto no se pueden determinar debido a que cambian constantemente y no existen patrones claros. Es el reino de lo que no se puede saber (los eventos de 11/9 son un ejemplo). En este territorio, un lider debe actuar para establecer el orden, percibir donde hay estabilidad y trabajar para cambiar la situacion de caos a complejidad. El quinto contexto, el desorden, ocurre cuando no esta claro cual de los otros contextos es el predominante. La salida es dividir la situacion en sus partes constitutivas y asignar cada una a los otros reinos. Entonces los lideres pueden tomar decisiones en forma adecuada a su contexto.
Cynefin, A Sense of Time and Place: An Ecological Approach to Sense Making and Learning In Formal and Informal Communities
Abstract This paper outlines one of several sense making models developed by the author based on ... more Abstract This paper outlines one of several sense making models developed by the author based on fieldwork across a range of organizations. These models are designed to pass the 'paper napkin'test: they can be drawn from memory on the back of a paper napkin and ...
I have previously argued both in this journal (Snowden 2001) and elsewhere that the value of stor... more I have previously argued both in this journal (Snowden 2001) and elsewhere that the value of story rests less in story telling per se, than it does in the patterns revealed by the natural flow of narrative within organizations. In practice I would go further and argue that having stories written, or performed within organizations by professionals has only a limited impact, will not of itself generate a open story telling culture and in many cases may militate against it. While we relate anecdotes naturally and without thinking about, we have a reaction against being told a story in a work context. At best, we may find it entertaining and it may have a temporary effect on our motivation and understanding; at worst, it may provoke the cynical, and mostly covert anti-story as a reaction to perceived Machiavellian propaganda or the naive antics of the trendy. The issue with narrative – and I will use this word purposefully to distinguish the approach from story telling – is to make it a...
Over the last two to three years I have asked well over 100 audiences at conferences, in company ... more Over the last two to three years I have asked well over 100 audiences at conferences, in company workshops and academic seminars a simple question: “What spreads fastest in your organisation, stories of failure or stories of success?” The inevitable answer is failure and there are good reasons for this. Over the millennia the human race has come to realise that being equipped with several stories of failure is far more valuable than a story of success. This implies that the common knowledge management focus on best practice is in effect contrary to natural practice; an attempt to impose an idealistic structured process onto the natural activity of learning and knowledge transfer through a focus on efficiency at the cost of effectiveness. The adoption of best practice implies that: 1. there is a best way to do something, 2. we can identify and codify what that thing is, 3. we can then get employees to follow best practice, 4. and that it is desirable that they should do so. In this a...
Retaining Women Air Force Officers: Work, Family, Career Satisfaction, and Intentions
Armed Forces & Society
Despite efforts to improve women’s military representation, mid-career female officers attrit at ... more Despite efforts to improve women’s military representation, mid-career female officers attrit at twice the rate of male peers. Research and theory suggest women’s turnover is influenced by family life including marriage and parenthood. But previous research has grouped women together, failing to extrapolate which factors influence retention of women with different family types. Thus, this study explored a single career point (mid-career) at different family intersections (married, unmarried, with, and without children) to elucidate work and family factors associated with female officers’ retention decisions. Using 2011 Air Force survey data ( n = 1,309), regression models tested four hypotheses regarding work and family factors associated with different subgroups’ military life satisfaction and career intentions. Findings indicate that after accounting for satisfaction, work factors were insignificant for all subgroups, but family factors (as hypothesized) were significantly associa...
For Christmas 1998 my parents followed a long tradition of giving me a book related to Welsh cult... more For Christmas 1998 my parents followed a long tradition of giving me a book related to Welsh culture. That year it was The Land and the Sea, a collection of the works of Kyffin Williams, published to celebrate his eightieth year. I have admired his work from when I first saw a portrait painted by him, of a much loved headmaster a quarter of a century earlier. He is an artist who has a profound understanding of place, both in his landscape work and his formal and informal portraits of the people of his native land, the Brythonic Kingdom of Gwynedd which dominated what is now Wales from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries. The Romans knew it as Venedotia, or the land of Venus, and I had the privilege of growing up there, walking its hills and sailing its coast. To sit on the summit of Tryfan as the sun descends over the Glyder ridge and Y Garn, casting shadows on to the precipitous slopes of Pen yr Ole Wen is a profound experience, not just of the aesthetic beauty of the landscape, but of one's place, one's identity, one's place of belonging. There is a welsh word, Cynefin, which means all of that and more and has no equivalent in the English language, where it is crudely translated as habitat or place. In his preface to Kyffin Williams'book, Nicholas Sinclair connects the word Cynefin to the interaction between human beings and their environment that is the essence of the author's work. I took that word as the name for a model that is the basis of this chapter, created to understand the different types of system within which we operate: ordered, complex and chaotic. Place is not just a physical construct; a sense of place evokes a personal and collective response to something that is highly experiential, concrete and yet abstract. Something that situates lives, enables meaning and instantiates identity. In the modern world this is augmented by the ability to link and connect across space, if not time, with people and places with whom we 31
... The most recent space shuttle disaster showed that all the right data was in the right ... Co... more ... The most recent space shuttle disaster showed that all the right data was in the right ... Consequent collapses are catastrophic in nature and generally result in the rapid and decisive imposition ... There are a variety of ways of doing this, ranging from trans-disciplinary exposure, for ...
Facing Disruption Responsive Contents and Technological Responsibility
The panel explores an alternative conceptual framework to understand and manage the implications ... more The panel explores an alternative conceptual framework to understand and manage the implications of non-linearly structured work forms that emerge in current work environments. The framework of complexity is used for this purpose and to assess the importance of boundaries and ...
Sense‐making, sensemaking and sense making—A systematic review and meta‐synthesis of literature in information science and education: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Feb 18, 2024
The substrate-independence theory utilizes sensemaking techniques to provide cognitively based sc... more The substrate-independence theory utilizes sensemaking techniques to provide cognitively based scaffolds that guide and structure learning. Scaffolds are cognitive abstractions of constraints that relate to information within a system. The substrate-independence theory concentrates on the flow of information as the underlying property of the host system. The substrate-independence theory views social systems as complex adaptive systems capable of repurposing their structure to combat external threats by utilizing constructors and substrates. Constructor theory is used to identify potential construction tasks, the legitimate input and output states that are possible, to map the desired change in the substrate’s attributes. Construction tasks can be mapped in advance for ordered and known environments. Construction tasks may also be mapped in either real-time or post hoc for unordered and complex environments using current sensemaking techniques. Mapping of the construction tasks in r...
Over the last two to three years I have asked well over 100 audiences at conferences, in company ... more Over the last two to three years I have asked well over 100 audiences at conferences, in company workshops and academic seminars a simple question: “What spreads fastest in your organisation, stories of failure or stories of success? ” The inevitable answer is failure and there are good reasons for this. Over the millennia the human race has come to realise that being equipped with several stories of failure is far more valuable than a story of success. This implies that the common knowledge management focus on best practice is in effect contrary to natural practice; an attempt to impose an idealistic structured process onto the natural activity of learning and knowledge transfer
This paper presents a science based approach to knowledge management, and related aspects of rese... more This paper presents a science based approach to knowledge management, and related aspects of research in the fields of social and management science. The science of complex adaptive systems provides a structure within which we can understand high levels of uncertainty in which outcomes are inherently unknowable, but which can be understood and managed as evolutionary mechanisms. This requires a rethinking of risk management from probabilistic models based on possible outcomes, the an understanding of the degree of stability and volatility within the system. Cognitive science has transformed our understanding of how humans make decisions, challenging the model of human decision making as one of rational choices based on personal self interesting, to one based on matching patterns acquired through experience or narrative transfer. The scientific use of narrative, and its fragmented and fractal nature offers considerable potential to transform knowledge management practice, and researc...
Muchos ejecutivos se sorprenden cuando los enfoques sobre liderazgo que han sido exitosos fallan ... more Muchos ejecutivos se sorprenden cuando los enfoques sobre liderazgo que han sido exitosos fallan en situaciones nuevas, pero contextos diferentes exigen respuestas distintas. Antes de abordar una situacion, los lideres deben reconocer que contextos la definen y segun eso disenar sus acciones. Snowden y Boone han creado una nueva perspectiva sobre el liderazgo y la toma de decisiones, que se basa en la ciencia de la complejidad. El resultado es el marco Cynefin, que ayuda a los ejecutivos a abordar los problemas segun cinco contextos. Los contextos simples se caracterizan por la estabilidad y relaciones de causa y efecto claras para cualquiera. A menudo la respuesta correcta es autoevidente. En este reino donde ?se sabe lo que se sabe?, los lideres deben percibir los hechos de una situacion, categorizar y responder. Los contextos complicados pueden contener muchas respuestas correctas, y aunque hay una clara relacion entre causa y efecto, no todos pueden verla. Es el reino donde ?se sabe lo que no se sabe?. Aca los lideres deben percibir, analizar y responder. En los contextos complejos, es imposible hallar respuestas correctas; mas bien, los patrones instructivos emergen si el lider realiza experimentos donde se puede fallar sin riesgo. Es el reino donde ?no se sabe lo que no se sabe?, donde hoy operan muchas de las empresas. En este contexto los lideres deben sondear, percibir y responder. En un contexto caotico, buscar respuestas correctas es inutil. Las relaciones entre causa y efecto no se pueden determinar debido a que cambian constantemente y no existen patrones claros. Es el reino de lo que no se puede saber (los eventos de 11/9 son un ejemplo). En este territorio, un lider debe actuar para establecer el orden, percibir donde hay estabilidad y trabajar para cambiar la situacion de caos a complejidad. El quinto contexto, el desorden, ocurre cuando no esta claro cual de los otros contextos es el predominante. La salida es dividir la situacion en sus partes constitutivas y asignar cada una a los otros reinos. Entonces los lideres pueden tomar decisiones en forma adecuada a su contexto.
Cynefin, A Sense of Time and Place: An Ecological Approach to Sense Making and Learning In Formal and Informal Communities
Abstract This paper outlines one of several sense making models developed by the author based on ... more Abstract This paper outlines one of several sense making models developed by the author based on fieldwork across a range of organizations. These models are designed to pass the 'paper napkin'test: they can be drawn from memory on the back of a paper napkin and ...
I have previously argued both in this journal (Snowden 2001) and elsewhere that the value of stor... more I have previously argued both in this journal (Snowden 2001) and elsewhere that the value of story rests less in story telling per se, than it does in the patterns revealed by the natural flow of narrative within organizations. In practice I would go further and argue that having stories written, or performed within organizations by professionals has only a limited impact, will not of itself generate a open story telling culture and in many cases may militate against it. While we relate anecdotes naturally and without thinking about, we have a reaction against being told a story in a work context. At best, we may find it entertaining and it may have a temporary effect on our motivation and understanding; at worst, it may provoke the cynical, and mostly covert anti-story as a reaction to perceived Machiavellian propaganda or the naive antics of the trendy. The issue with narrative – and I will use this word purposefully to distinguish the approach from story telling – is to make it a...
Over the last two to three years I have asked well over 100 audiences at conferences, in company ... more Over the last two to three years I have asked well over 100 audiences at conferences, in company workshops and academic seminars a simple question: “What spreads fastest in your organisation, stories of failure or stories of success?” The inevitable answer is failure and there are good reasons for this. Over the millennia the human race has come to realise that being equipped with several stories of failure is far more valuable than a story of success. This implies that the common knowledge management focus on best practice is in effect contrary to natural practice; an attempt to impose an idealistic structured process onto the natural activity of learning and knowledge transfer through a focus on efficiency at the cost of effectiveness. The adoption of best practice implies that: 1. there is a best way to do something, 2. we can identify and codify what that thing is, 3. we can then get employees to follow best practice, 4. and that it is desirable that they should do so. In this a...
Retaining Women Air Force Officers: Work, Family, Career Satisfaction, and Intentions
Armed Forces & Society
Despite efforts to improve women’s military representation, mid-career female officers attrit at ... more Despite efforts to improve women’s military representation, mid-career female officers attrit at twice the rate of male peers. Research and theory suggest women’s turnover is influenced by family life including marriage and parenthood. But previous research has grouped women together, failing to extrapolate which factors influence retention of women with different family types. Thus, this study explored a single career point (mid-career) at different family intersections (married, unmarried, with, and without children) to elucidate work and family factors associated with female officers’ retention decisions. Using 2011 Air Force survey data ( n = 1,309), regression models tested four hypotheses regarding work and family factors associated with different subgroups’ military life satisfaction and career intentions. Findings indicate that after accounting for satisfaction, work factors were insignificant for all subgroups, but family factors (as hypothesized) were significantly associa...
For Christmas 1998 my parents followed a long tradition of giving me a book related to Welsh cult... more For Christmas 1998 my parents followed a long tradition of giving me a book related to Welsh culture. That year it was The Land and the Sea, a collection of the works of Kyffin Williams, published to celebrate his eightieth year. I have admired his work from when I first saw a portrait painted by him, of a much loved headmaster a quarter of a century earlier. He is an artist who has a profound understanding of place, both in his landscape work and his formal and informal portraits of the people of his native land, the Brythonic Kingdom of Gwynedd which dominated what is now Wales from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries. The Romans knew it as Venedotia, or the land of Venus, and I had the privilege of growing up there, walking its hills and sailing its coast. To sit on the summit of Tryfan as the sun descends over the Glyder ridge and Y Garn, casting shadows on to the precipitous slopes of Pen yr Ole Wen is a profound experience, not just of the aesthetic beauty of the landscape, but of one's place, one's identity, one's place of belonging. There is a welsh word, Cynefin, which means all of that and more and has no equivalent in the English language, where it is crudely translated as habitat or place. In his preface to Kyffin Williams'book, Nicholas Sinclair connects the word Cynefin to the interaction between human beings and their environment that is the essence of the author's work. I took that word as the name for a model that is the basis of this chapter, created to understand the different types of system within which we operate: ordered, complex and chaotic. Place is not just a physical construct; a sense of place evokes a personal and collective response to something that is highly experiential, concrete and yet abstract. Something that situates lives, enables meaning and instantiates identity. In the modern world this is augmented by the ability to link and connect across space, if not time, with people and places with whom we 31
... The most recent space shuttle disaster showed that all the right data was in the right ... Co... more ... The most recent space shuttle disaster showed that all the right data was in the right ... Consequent collapses are catastrophic in nature and generally result in the rapid and decisive imposition ... There are a variety of ways of doing this, ranging from trans-disciplinary exposure, for ...
Facing Disruption Responsive Contents and Technological Responsibility
The panel explores an alternative conceptual framework to understand and manage the implications ... more The panel explores an alternative conceptual framework to understand and manage the implications of non-linearly structured work forms that emerge in current work environments. The framework of complexity is used for this purpose and to assess the importance of boundaries and ...
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