Sensemaking, Dilemmas, and Solutions
Introduction
Strategic Management: Sensemaking, Dilemmas, and Solutions, Special issue of Intl J Bus and Econ, Edited by Arnoldo R. Camacho, Wen-Hsiang Lai and Arch G. Woodside; Deadline 4 Jul 2013
Call for Papers for a Special Topics Issue of the
International Journal of Business and Economics ()
Strategic Management: Sensemaking, Dilemmas, and Solutions
Deadline: July 4, 2013
Chief executive officers and department heads face (and sometimes ignore) four major categories of strategic riddles. The four riddles relate to the following questions.
Sensemaking. How can I, the CEO / department head, improve the quality/usefulness of my sensemaking capabilities? “Sensemaking involves turning circumstances into a situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard into action” (Weick et al. 2005, p. 4009). Sensemaking allows shifting from management under uncertainty into a structured risk analysis process, avoiding potential losses and achieving superior results. Sensemaking research includes both description and normative processes, that is, how is sensemaking done now and what changes improve the quality/usefulness of sensemaking, respectively.
Deciding/Planning. What antecedents and decision rules (heuristics) are particularly useful in crafting options and selecting courses of action in specific contexts that the executive now faces? Breathtaking progress is occurring in research on crafting and selecting heuristics for making choices that are relevant for improving executive decision-making (see Gigerenzer et al. 2011).
Implementation Strategy. Who actually does what, when, where, and how in organizations? What is the structure of seemingly unstructured executions of decisions in the firm and in interfirm contexts? Mintzberg et al. (1976) and the system dynamics literature (Sternman 2000) are milestone in raising and answering these questions.
Evaluating Outcomes. What actually happened? What configuration of causes and processes lead to the observed outcomes. What operational steps/remedies will work to overcome the incompetency and incompetency training? Related to the third issue here, Little appears to be known about the inner-working and the operational incompetency of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and other federal commissions; the sheer act of management auditing and fault-finding reporting is insufficient frequently for generating effective remedies (Woodside 2012).
Responding to this CFP. This call for papers seeks paper submissions addressing one or more of these strategic riddles. Please submit your paper electronically in WORD (with one PPT file if necessary for figures and tables) to all three co-editors of this special issue. Your paper should be 4000 to 7000 words—counting all words including the references. The preference is for papers that contribute advances in both theory and empirical positivistic and/or qualitative findings. Case studies for discussing above strategic riddles in business management are also welcome. The International Journal of Business and Economics (IJBE) is indexed by EconLit, EBSCO, ProQuest, and Cabell’s and is rated "B" in a recent ranking made by the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC).
Co-editors: Arnoldo R. Camacho, INCAE Business School, Costa Rica (arnoldo.camacho@incae.edu); Wen-Hsiang Lai, Feng Chia University, Taiwan (whlai@fcu.edu.tw); Arch G. Woodside, Boston College, U.S.A. (arch.woodside@bc.edu).
References
Gigerenzer, G., Hertwig, R., & Pachur, T. (2011). Heuristics: The Foundations of Adaptive Behavior, New York: Oxford University Press.
Mintzberg, H., Raisinghani, D., & Theoret, A. (1976). The structure of “unstructured” decision processes. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21, 246-275.
Sterman, J.D. (2000). Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World with CD-ROM, New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Weick, K., Sutcliffe, K.M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005), Organizing and the process of sensemaking. Organization Science, 16, 409-421.
Woodside, A.G. (2012). Incompetency training: Theory, practice, and remedies. Journal of Business Research, 65, 279–293.
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