Learning to Improve Program Systems While Navigating Program and Institutional Constraints

Many youth worker professional development (PD) efforts tend to focus on individualized skill development, rather than learning as a contextualized phenomenon that impacts youth workers’ everyday experiences in the field. Youth worker learning is fundamentally embedded in a broader ecosystem of programs, institutions, and systems that influence how they make sense of and implement their learnings. Examining institutionalized experiences and how they shape youth workers’ response to PD requires attention to the larger ecology of the contexts in which they work. In this paper, I analyze a PD initiative facilitated by a school district in the Rocky Mountain West. Data collected during the PD show that participating youth workers made changes to their program systems. At the same time, participants reported a range of institutional constraints that did not cohere with the PD. I bridge sensemaking theory to research on youth worker self-efficacy to unpack youth workers’ reaction to and implementation of the PD, and I discuss implications for youth worker PD. I propose that PD efforts could more closely attend to youth workers’ institutional contexts.

Introducing a sensemaking perspective to the service experience

PurposeMost recent service experience research considers customers as sensemakers and sensemaking as a focal process in experience construction. Despite this, the sensemaking theory engendered in organization studies has not been applied in the quest for an in-depth understanding of the service experience. This study introduces a sensemaking perspective to the service experience and develops a conceptualization of how customers construct their experiences cognitively through sensemaking.Design/methodology/approachThe service experience literature is dominated by a focus on firms implementing service experiences for customers. This study, in contrast, investigates service experience and its formation from the customers' viewpoint: how service experiences are formed as a part of customers' everyday life and sensemaking processes instead of under service providers' control.FindingsService experience is characterized as a mental picture – a collage of meanings created by a customer through the sensemaking processes. A sensemaking framework that characterizes service experience formation and its four seminal dimensions, including the self-related, sociomaterial, retrospective and prospective sensemaking, is introduced.Originality/valueThis article contributes to the service literature by introducing a new theoretical lens through which the service experience concept can be investigated and reframed.

From Compliance to Improvement: How School Leaders Make Sense of Institutional and Technical Demands When Implementing a Continuous Improvement Process

Purpose: A recurring frustration in educational research is the tendency for school leaders to implement reforms in ways that prioritize compliance over more substantive improvements to practice. Drawing on new institutional theory and sensemaking theory, this article explores the different ways leaders respond to continuous improvement (CI) reforms and why they frequently privilege external compliance over the perceived needs of their schools. Methods: This study used interviews, observations, and artifacts to analyze how six leaders across two midwestern school districts led the implementation of a CI method. Data analysis involved an iterative process of identifying emergent themes, refining themes based on existing research, and evaluating their usefulness in explaining differences within and across school leaders, in order to understand the different ways leaders responded to CI and what factors caused them to prioritize compliance over substantive improvement. Findings: Findings illuminate six different responses to CI that vary across three dimensions: whether leaders prioritize bridging or buffering, the form or the function of reform, and concerns for external legitimacy or internal improvement. Leaders’ professional identities, their beliefs about the usefulness of CI, and their perception of district regulation contributed to whether they implemented CI in a way that prioritized concerns for legitimacy over improvement. Implications: These findings trace the shallow reach of recent reform efforts to the ways leaders make sense of the complex institutional and technical demands of their role, offer an integrative typology of leaders’ different approaches to implementation, and identify factors that support more productive responses to district reform.

The Relationship Between Perceived Leader Busyness and Perspective Taking and Interaction Behavior of Followers

How leaders influence followers have been a hot topic in both research and practice. Yet, prior studies have primarily focused on the impact of one leadership style, while overlooking how a leadership role may influence behavioral expressions of leaders. Particularly, being a leader means having to face time demands and workload pressure, and thus, busyness becomes a common phenomenon for leaders. Focused on perceived leader busyness, we had examined how it may influence employee interactions with leaders and how those interactions influenced leader evaluations of the performance of followers. Based on sensemaking theory, we propose that when followers have a high level of perspective taking, they are more likely to take avoidance behavior when perceiving leaders as of high busyness. Further, when followers engage in interaction avoidance behavior, leaders may consider followers as hiding errors or intentionally concealing their work process, which reduces positive evaluations (i.e., task performance and conscientiousness evaluation) while enhancing negative evaluation (i.e., deviance behavior) toward followers. We conducted two studies. Study one was conducted with a 25 participants interview and data of 297 employees to show scale validity of perceived leader busyness. Study two was conducted with 377 employees and their direct supervisors. Applying the complex modeling method, we found that followers with low-level perspective taking are less likely to engage in interaction avoidance behavior, even when perceiving leaders as high busyness; interaction avoidance behavior of followers has a positive relationship with counterproductive behavior evaluation of leaders, but a negative relationship with conscientiousness behavior evaluation. This study enriches the dyadic interactions between leaders and followers. In addition, it also shows the burden of perspective taking.

Educators’ Beliefs and Perceptions of Implementing Restorative Practices

Many urban school districts are adopting restorative practices (RP) as a means to reduce suspensions and resolve racial discipline gaps. In this study, we use a sensemaking framework to examine educators’ beliefs about discipline and their perceptions of RP and its implementation. We draw on survey responses ( N = 363) administered after educators attended RP trainings in a large, diverse county in California. Our results show the majority of respondents possess beliefs or an understanding of RP that are compatible with the goals of the approach. Survey respondents cite challenges to implementing RP that are at times consistent (e.g., lack of time) and at times at odds (e.g., relatively low emphasis on lack of leadership as a hindrance) with the current literature. As suggested by sensemaking theory, we find attitudes and beliefs are predictors of educators’ experiences implementing RP, including challenges to implementation and effects of the practices.

We Do Much More Than Norms Require’: Making Sense of Family-owned Healthcare Firms’ Profitability and Ethics

To address the literature gap regarding the business ethics of family firms in the healthcare sector, this case study investigates profitability and business ethics from the perspective of a very successful Finnish private healthcare company. The study combines business ethics and sensemaking theories to provide a broad view of the company’s performance and stimulate new thinking about the relationship between ethics and profitability in private healthcare. Company’s profitability requirements seem to elicit disapproval from the public. This study examines how a private, family-owned healthcare company combines business ethics and profitability successfully in its operations and how this family-owned company has successfully constructed a plausible, trusted and ethical identity. The theoretical framework of this study is based on business ethics, profitability, trust and sensemaking theory. The study shows that the case company has worked tirelessly to maintain high ethical practices and standards in providing excellent care and enjoying high profitability. By achieving high standards of business ethics and maintaining good social relations with stakeholders, the company has developed a plausible and trustworthy identity, while continuously improving its operations. The case shows that the surrounding environment, in particular, places significant pressure on the case company’s daily activities and management. Even when customers (municipalities and residents) are very satisfied with the quality of care, this does not automatically lead to performance and profitability in the short term. Profitability as a value creation can also depend on personal relations and trust fostered between the company and its stakeholders. Thus, applying sensemaking theory, profitability means company’s ongoing sensemaking about the plausibility of its actions and reading cues within the environment now and for the future.

Pre-service Teachers’ Perspectives on their Preparation for Inclusive Teaching: Implications for an Organizational Change in Teacher Education

This single case study examined the perspectives of 12 pre-service teachers in one Ontario teacher education program towards their preparation for inclusive teaching using Sensemaking theory as a theoretical framework. Semi-structured interviews as well as document analysis for inclusive education policies were conducted. The findings showed that pre-service teachers perceive inclusion as a collaborative policy practice that requires the possession of a positive mindset, respect towards all learners, and the necessary resources. Moreover, the findings suggest the need for the examined program to critically review its curricular structure in terms of how course designs and requirements would further support future teachers’ knowledge and practices around inclusive teaching. In addition, completing the field-based experience component under the supervision of inclusion-oriented associate teachers and in K-12 classrooms that exemplify students’ diversity was found crucial.

When the Chinese guy becomes the female IT specialist Liu – a conceptualization of reputational shifts in international assignments

PurposeInternational assignments rely on interactions between host country nationals (HCNs) and an international assignee (IA). These interactions are significantly determined by the reputation that the IA holds among HCNs. However, reputation has only scarcely been addressed in extant mobility research, and there is a lack of understanding about how the reputation of an IA shifts among HCNs during the course of an assignment. The purpose of this paper is to understand the development of an individual's reputation as well as the interactions between an IA and HCNs in the context of international assignments.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that builds upon the central idea in extant research of individual reputation as a social construction and draws on sensemaking theory to develop its conceptual model.FindingsAs extant research argues for both a temporal and dynamic dimension of reputation, the authors introduce time and reputational richness as central model elements. Furthermore, the conceptual model proposes reputational events as the principal triggers for reputational shifts. Reputational events reveal quantitatively and qualitatively new informational cues about the IA to HCNs, who then use these cues to incrementally construct the IA's reputation in sensemaking processes. In addition, contextual factors of reputational shifts, namely accelerators and amplifiers, are discussed. The authors argue that these contextual factors may affect both the timing and the strength of reputational shifts.Originality/valueThe study introduces a novel conceptual model and contributes to the understanding of individual reputation development as well as the interactions between an IA and HCNs in international assignments.

Emergent Organizing in Crisis: US Nurses’ Sensemaking and Job Crafting During COVID-19

Crisis situations may render some roles meaningless or modify the meanings of existing roles. In general, employees participate in job crafting to alter or redefine their tasks and relationships to enhance their meaningfulness. Drawing on Weick’s sensemaking theory, this article explores how nurses working directly with COVID-19 patients participate in job crafting amid a pandemic crisis. It proposes an iterative conceptual framework in which sensemaking via the cycle of enactment, selection, and retention informs job crafting, thus contributing to emergent organizing. This enactment of emergent organizing provides fodder for further sensemaking, which highlights the symbiotic relationship between sensemaking and job crafting. Practically speaking, in order to facilitate sensemaking, job crafting, and organizing, management must acknowledge and impart flexibility, and must be open to impromptu thinking by nurses.

Using assessment data to improve equity: How teachers use insights from the Scottish National Standardised Assessments

Evidence-based decision-making is regarded as an important indicator of quality in schools around the world. Using data gathered from assessments, in conjunction with other insights, can help school leaders and teachers better meet the needs of learners. In schools that cater to disadvantaged learners, using data to design targeted interventions plays an important role in improving equity. In this paper we report on a study with five schools in Scotland. All schools had learner cohorts characterised by multiple layers of disadvantage. Informed by the theoretical underpinnings of sensemaking theory, we investigated how teachers and school leaders used data from the Scottish National Standardised Assessments (SNSA). Our findings suggest that teachers and leaders are adept at combining assessment data with other insights – including their own observations. All schools were active in using data to inform decision-making, both at the whole-school level and at the classroom level. They reported multiple uses of data, from validating their own instincts to targeting support to particular cohorts of learners. We suggest that the way in which SNSA is designed – explicitly providing data to teachers to help inform their professional judgement – is a factor in the positive approach to data usage among these schools.