Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This study investigates the impact between sensemaking as proposed by Karl Weick and his associates' school of thought, and ubiquitous electronically mediated informing (UEMI) which is the attention-efficient availability of data, information and electronic computing.At best, Weickian sensemaking theory ignores the potential role of UEMI in sensemaking and at worst, it regards it as more of a hindrance than a help.This dim view of electronic information technology (IT), typified as "spreadsheets on screens", had merit when first expressed in 1985, but its unchanged position notwithstanding IT's transformation towards UEMI is increasingly untenable.An interpretation based on the attention-efficiency aspect of Mark Weiser's vision of ubiquitous computing is harnessed as the foundation to review the progress since 1985 towards true ubiquitous computing and to analyse its increasing impact on sensemaking.Ubiquitous computing (which includes UEMI) still has a long way to go with the accuracy of speech recognition a notable obstacle.Yet, progress has been remarkable, and this thesis employs five current UEMI technologies within a limited aspect of society, namely organisations to evaluate this impact: personal memories, virtual presence, augmented reality, speech recognition and organisational memories.Sensemaking is that which gives meaning to experience.It is a social and on-going process made in retrospect, which seeks congruence with one's identity, is enactive of an environment which enables further sensemaking, and focuses on the noticing and embellishment of cues to the point where the sense which has been made, is plausible enough to act upon.In addition to these seven process properties sensemaking theory also comprises its substance which involves words, sentences, vocabularies and their mechanics.To make meaning (i.e.sense) a minimum of one cue needs to be linked to one frame.Frames tend to be vocabularies that summarise past experience, whilst cues tend to emerge from current experience.This study introduces four notions.Firstly, attention is viewed as a scarce resource in an economic sense.As an act of attending, sensemaking is viewed as an economic process in which ends (the sense or knowledge made) are achieved with limited means (time and attending capability).Therefore people will pay (i.e.invest) attention to make sense of something only up to a point of plausibility where the perceived cost of paying more attention exceeds the expected benefit of doing so.In line with other economic processes, the productivity of organisational sensemaking may be increased with appropriate organisational
Author: Jorge Diniz Queiroga Loureiro
Language: English
Subfield: Management Information Systems
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2135615661