Chapter 3: Sensemaking in Organisations
3.7 Beliefs and Actions in Sensemaking
3.7.3 Sensemaking as Commitment
Commitment sensemaking is important to understand because it embodies interacts that seed initial stages which lead to social order. Although the order is continuously reaccomplished, the glue facilitating that order is continually produced by justifications for prior interacts.1 In other words, this form of sensemaking explains how organisational members become bound to certain projects or conduct in or outside organisations based on prior actions, decisions or actions. It can be understood better if the phenomenological influences are underlined, because they highlight the behaviour of people as influenced by some perceived observers, and the continued need hence, to act rationally for ego-defensive reasons in the eyes of such observers.
These ideas explain how people direct attention towards certain cues which are used as acceptable resources for justifying their actions, which does nevertheless not exclude biases towards to cues which support the justifications. As Weick expounds, “tenacious justification can produce selective attention, confident action, and self-confirmation. Tenacious
justifications prefigure both perception and action, which means they are often self- confirming.”2 The emerging picture is that of people engaged in a self-sustaining system which favours continued embellishment rather than the opposite. The conundrum is therefore that acknowledgement necessary for discontinuation may likely portray a negative
(unwanted) image on the part of the actor. If the aim has been to achieve an image of rationality and social competence, failure at these should induce cognitive dissonance and efforts to remove related negative feeling. As the system builds up, people are not conscious to its operation and their continued hand in feeding it, which increases commitment, even though such commitment may be in the direction of jeopardy.
1 Weick (2001, p. 15) 2 Weick (1988, p. 310)
Thus, commitment follows from the trace of action for which one is evidently accountable, placing constraints on the actor’s subsequent conduct. Weick mentions three basic conditions which should result in commitment to actions, namely that (a) there is evidence that the actions took place, or they were publicly observed (visibility of the behaviour); (b) that the actions are irrevocable (irrevocability of behaviour); and (c) that there remains no doubt that the actor is responsible for the actions because they made the choice to act (volition of behaviour).1
In organisational contexts, highlighted as placing higher demands on accountability and even question rationality itself, the pressure for accounting for one’s actions should be expected to be higher. Such result in increased need for justification for one’s intended actions or the outcomes of these actions, including outcomes of autonomous actions; particularly when they are negative. Weick highlights just how such justifications may heighten commitment, and thus continue to feed the system, pointing out that “[e]xplanations that are developed retrospectively to justify committed actions are often stronger than beliefs developed under other, less involving, conditions.”2 Here, an important factor to which attention should be drawn is the distinction between the contexts which have higher demands for justification of one’s actions and those which are less so. He further states that a “tenacious justification can produce selective attention, confident action, and self-confirmation”3 which begins to indicate how perceptions become influenced through selection of acceptable resources over those are considered, by the sensemakers, to be less so.
Weick specifies that the “macrolevel recipe to produce commitment is a setting where there is action, publicity, choice, high stakes, and low tolerance of mistakes.”4 He further explains that “[l]ow tolerance of mistakes strengthens commitment by increasing the necessity to justify whatever one does although low tolerance could also mean weakened choice.”5 In other words, once the system of commitment begins to strengthen, it limits different choices which deviate from the initial choices made. That is because “[o]nce it becomes harder to change the behaviour than to change the beliefs about that behaviour, then beliefs are 1 Weick (1995, p. 157) 2 Weick (1988, p. 310) 3 Weick (1988, p. 310) 4 Weick (1995, p. 158) 5 Weick (1995, p. 158)
selectively mobilized to justify the act.”1 Weick cautions about the selective attention related to commitment and thus the influence on perception.
The dark side of commitment is that it produces blind spots. Once a person becomes committed to an action, and then builds an explanation that justifies that action, the explanation tends to persist and become transformed into an assumption that is taken for granted. Once this transformation has occurred it is unlikely that the assumption will be readily viewed as a potential contributor to a crisis.2
The way in which the blind spot develops and the consequences thereof are worth watching, especially because, as pointed out, this may drive the behaviour right into the direction of jeopardy without the actor realising how the initial justification set a stage for the chimera. Thus, the blind spots also make it difficult for people to see where the problem lies, which perhaps is why the system of commitment becomes self-sustaining.
The notion of self-sustaining ties to the reason commitment is also discussed as escalation, “where it is portrayed as a force that blocks withdrawal from situations of growing loss. [It] is viewed as a liability because it reduces flexibility, learning and adaptation.”3All this has its
genesis from the fact that “once people choose how to justify the actions that they choose to perform, they fix their frame within which their beliefs, actions and accusations will then make sense.” 4 That fixing of frames is worth some extension here because the question
becomes what is the content of the frames to which beliefs are fixed and thus cues are
interpreted within. Discussing interruption of projects and where people draw from to resume them, Weick and associates mention “institutional constraints, organizational premises, plans, expectations, acceptable justifications, and traditions inherited from predecessors”5 as the
content. It is important here to remain sensitive to the type of reservoir (frame) which may be fixed as the place into which fitting resources or acceptable justifications (cues) are fit in to make sense. The fixing suggest that once this framework begins to function as the primary context in which cues are fit, it will continue to stubbornly remain the primary framework. Weick and associates make direct portrayal of where and how frames can be fixed, with further cues fit within them to make interpretations and thus construct meaning.
1 Weick (1995, p. 156) 2 Weick (1988, p. 310) 3 Weick (1995, p. 161) 4 Weick (1995, p. 164) 5 Weick et al. (2005, p. 409)
Bristol Royal Infirmary’s (BRI) [continued] a pediatric cardiac surgery program for almost 14 years in the face of data showing a mortality rate roughly double the rate of any other center in England… [Investigations] concluded that there was a prevailing mindset among people at BRI that enabled them to ‘wish away their poor results’ as a ‘run of bad luck’ even though ‘there was evidence sufficient to put the Unit on notice that there were questions to be answered as regards the adequacy of the service’.1
They explain that the “mindset prevailed partly because surgeons constructed their identity as that of people learning complex surgical procedures in the context of unusually challenging cases.”2 Thus, once the premises which served as one of the primary frames within which to
interpret death rate (cues) was that they are in a process of learning something difficult, the increased in death rate was seen to them as acceptable. The consequences should have, from an outsider’s perspective, such as the community served, been interpreted differently which should have been why the investigation was necessary to begin with.
Weick advises that “if we want to understand the sense people make of the world, one place to start is to inquire about earlier binding actions and the acceptable justifications that were available when the binding took place.”3 He also stresses that just because “justifications may be adopted for ego-defensive reasons, that does not mean they are necessarily inaccurate or fanciful.”4 By that he highlights that given the focused attention on that which is justified and the need to legitimise it, sensemakers begin to see more details on it, which further gives them confidence about what is being justified. It is therefore observable that commitment may lead people into treacherous terrains, just as it may be beneficial in strengthening or motivating actions. Also, it may start with small sensible structures which are continuously embellished into those which are larger and more impactful.
1 Weick et al. (2005 citing Kennedy, 2001, pp. 247-248) 2 Weick et al. (2005, p. 416)
3 Weick 1995, pp. 156-157) 4 Weick (1995, p. 158)