Sense Making

Organizational life is complex,

indeterminate, differentiated, and chaotic.
Multiple strategies are required to perceive
and weave discursive discourses of
organization.
Sense Making is very important in
perceiving organizational relation and
discourses.
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Sense Making
Sense making is a continuous process by which we
get the ability to analyze any complex situation in
organizational life
Sense making is situation, person/position, and time
dependent Weick (2005)
Organizational theorists believe that organizational
decision making, sense making, discourse,
interpretation, understanding, and action are grounded
on cognitive process.
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Sense Making
Concept of SenseMaking
Sensemaking is a social process; human
thinking and social functioning are essential
aspects of this (Resnick, Levine & Teasly, 1991).
To understand sensemaking is to pay more
intention to sufficient cues for coordination such
as generalized other, prototypes, stereotypes,
and roles.
Sensemaking never starts or stops, it is an
ongoing process.
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Sense Making
How People do sense making in organization
In organizational life people are confronted with a
lot of cues, too much too notice anyway. A person will
only notice a few cues, because of his own filter. Your
own interest and your unconsciousness depend what
cues you focus on. It is impossible to notice all the
cues, because there are too many.
Driven by plausibility rather than accuracy: People
are cognitively lazy, when they found an answer to the
question, people stop searching. No alternatives are
evaluated, while people might not even know the half
of it.
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Sense Making
How People do sense making in
organization
Sensemaking suggests that organizational
issues - 'strategies', 'breakdowns', 'change',
'goals', 'plans', 'tasks', 'teams', and so on are
not things that one can find out in the world or
that exist in the organization. Rather, their
source is people's way of thinking.
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Sense Making
Organizational outcome is also reflected by
cognitive sense making
It is primarily a dynamic and complex
process.
Subjective strategies and cognitive thinking
or sense making are consistent with
entrepreneurial intention
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Sense Making
Cognitive schemas (cognitive schema is the
accumulated and organized knowledge about a
particular issue that is past knowledge matured from
experience ) can be useful in organizational sense
making, because they allow us to take shortcuts in
interpreting a vast amount of information.
However, cognitive schemas cannot alone predict
cognition process in organizations.
Cognitive sense making can be explained from the
framework of situated cognition.
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Sense Making
Situated cognition, i.e., interaction of
cognitive schemas with organizational
contexts can provide a complete and
comprehensive picture of cognition process in
organizations and
Through this situated cognition, managers
can understand and solve organizational
problems.
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Sense Making
Suppose you are the production manager. one
year before, your GM advised you to work hard.
That time your most of the machines were
malfunctioning very frequently.
So, you made you sense from the advice that your
boss actually meant that you had to take proper
care of the machines.
Today your GM told you the same thing (i.e. work
hard).
From the cognitive schema you can make the
same sense. But now machines are working fine.
So, how do you make sense from this advice?
Only by cognitive schema or integrating cognitive
schema with specific organizational context!
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Personality
When we talk about
Gordon Allport nearly 70 years
personality, we dont
before defined personality as
mean any individual
The dynamic organization
characteristic of a
within the individual of those
person, i.e., the person
psychophysical systems that
has charm, a smiling
determine his unique
face, or a positive attitude
adjustments to his environment
towards life.
Rather than looking at
some parts of the
person, personality
looks at some
aggregate whole that is
greater than the sum of
the parts

It represents the overall

profile or comprehensive
traits of overall behavior that
reflect the unique nature of a
person as that person acts,
reacts, and interacts with
others
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Personality

Personality Traits: Characteristics that influence

how people think, feel and behave on and off the
job.

Include tendencies to be enthusiastic, demanding, easygoing, nervous, etc.

Each trait can be viewed on a continuum, from low to
high.

There is no wrong trait, but rather managers have

a complex mix of traits.

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Personality
Personality Determinants
An early debate in personality research centered
on whether an individuals personality was the result
of heredity or of environment.
Was the personality predetermined at birth, or was
it the result of the individuals interaction with his or
her surroundings?
Clearly there is no simple answer.
In addition , today we recognize a third factor
the situation.
A persons personality is now generally considered
to be made up of both heredity and environment
factors, moderated by situational condition.
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Personality
Personality Determinants
Heredity
Physical
characteristics
Gender

Environment
Cultural factors
Social factors

Situational
Factors
Personalit
y
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Personality
Heredity refers to those that were determined at
conception.
Physical structure, facial attractiveness, gender,
temperament, muscle composition, and reflexes,
energy level, and biological properties are
characteristics that are generally considered to be
either completely or substantially influenced by
generic tradition
Environment refers to the external factors that exert
pressures on our personality formation
culture where we raised, our early conditioning,
the norms and values of our family, friends, and
social groups.
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Personality
Situation influences the effects of heredity
and environment on personality. An individuals
personality, although generally stable and
consistent, does change in different situations
For example in religious place, hospital, job
interview, presenting something in a seminar,
our natural personality can be changed.
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Personality
Personality Traits
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
MBTI is one of the most widely used
personality assessment frameworks. Based
on the answers of a 100-question personality
test, the following traits are classified:
Extroverted or Introverted (E or I):
Extroverted individuals are outgoing,
sociable, and assertive. Introverts are quiet
and shy.

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Personality
Personality Traits .. continued
Sensing or Intuitive (S or N): Sensing types are
practical and prefer routine and order. They focus on
details. Intuitives rely on unconscious sensors and
look at the big picture
Thinking or Feeling (T or F): Thinking types use
reason and logic to handle problems. Feeling types
rely on their personal values and emotions.
Perceiving or Judging (P or J): Perceiving types are
flexible and spontaneous. Judging types want
control, and prefer world be ordered and structured.
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Personality
Personality Traits .. Continued
Recently another model of personality gets
enormous attention from the researchers.
This is known as Big Five Model.
Extraversion: refers to comfort level with
relationships. outgoing, sociable, and
assertive (or opposite like reserved, quiet
based on score on this dimension).
Agreeableness: refers to propensity not to
defer to others. good natured, warm, trusting,
cooperative (or opposite like disagreeable,
cold, based on score on this dimension). 18

Personality
Personality Traits .. Continued
Conscientiousness: refers to reliability. responsible,
dependable, persistent (or opposite like
disorganized, distracted, unreliable based on score
on this dimension).
Emotional stability: refers to ability to withstand
stress. unworried, secure, relaxed (or opposite like
nervous, anxious, depressed, insecure based on
score on this dimension).
Openness to experience: refers to interests and
fascinations with novelty and creativity. imaginative,
curious, broad-minded (or opposite like
conventional, find comfort in the familiar based on
score on this dimension).
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Personality

Successful managers vary widely on the Big

Five.

It is important to understand these traits since it helps

explain a managers approach to planning, leading,
organizing, etc.
Managers should also be aware of their own style and try to
tone down problem areas.

Internal Locus of Control: People believe they

are responsible for their fate.
See their actions are important to achieving goals.

External Locus of Control: People believe

outside forces are responsible for their fate.
Their actions make little difference in achieving outcomes.

Managers need an Internal Locus of Control!

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Conflict

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Conflict
When Conflicts Occur
You are working as a junior executive in a
Garments company
You did not get your salary for the last three
months, or
Your manager promised to give you 30,000 taka
salary. Instead you are getting 25,000, or
Authorities promised to give you 20,000 taka yearly
bonus from profit, though they made profit, but they
did not give, or
You are supposed to get festival bonus, but you got
nothing, or
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Conflict
When Conflicts Occur . continued

You are supposed to work up to 6:00 PM.

But Manager forced you to work up to 9: PM,
or
You should get one day weekend. But you
are working in every Friday in the last three
weeks, or
Your manager misbehaves with you
frequently, or
You are supposed to work in a healthy
environment. But your garments factory floor
temperature is 500 C, or
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Conflict
When Conflicts Occur . continued
You are working in a group and assigned a common
task. Your group members are not working properly. So
you have more work load, or
Some of your group members are also very noncooperative and rude, or
You do not get enough facilities as you required, or
You have enough responsibility but do not have
sufficient authority, or
You have disagreements with your manager or group
members, or
You have personality dispute with your manager 24

Conflict
When Conflicts Occur . continued
So, what will happen???????
You have anxiety!!!
You are annoyed!!!
You are angry!!!

You have CONFLICT with your

Manager or authority or group
members

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Conflict
Therefore, conflicts occur whenever
disagreements exist in a social situation over
issues of substance or whenever emotional
antagonisms create frictions between
individuals or groups.
Conflict encompasses a broad range of
social phenomena: class, racial, religious,
and communal conflicts; riots, rebellions,
revolutions; strikes and civil disorders;
marches, demonstrations, protest
gatherings.
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Conflict
Definition
Formally, we can define Conflict as:
The process in which one party perceives that its
interests are being opposed or negatively affected by
another party.
Conflict is a struggle over values or claims to
status, power, and scarce resources.
The aims of the conflict groups are not only to
gain the desired values, but also to neutralize,
injure, or eliminate rivals.
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Conflict
Conflict has at last two basic forms:
Substantive (not imaginary) conflict is a
fundamental disagreement over ends or goals to be
pursued and the means for their accomplishment.
You are the production manager of Square
Pharmaceuticals and want to decrease quality to get
break even for one of your drugs marinating the
same price. Marketing manager proposes to
increase price by maintaining quality. It is a
substantive disagreement between these two
managers which can create conflict.
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Conflict
Conflict has at last two basic forms:
Emotional conflict involves interpersonal
difficulties that arise over feelings of anger,
mistrust, dislike, fear, and resentment, and
the like. This conflict is commonly known as a
clash of personality.
You and Mr. Rahim have joined in Grameen
Phone last year as executives. Mr. Rahim is
very popular and getting promotion very
quickly. You simply do not like him. This is
emotional conflict.
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Conflict
Role of Manager in Conflict
Managers can spend considerable time
dealing with conflict, including conflicts in
which managers is directly involved as one of
the principal actors.
In other situation, the manager act as a
mediator or third party whose job is to resolve
conflicts between individuals or groups.
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Conflict
Functional (Constructive) conflict serves the
organizations interests.
Example:
10 executives are working in R & D department of
Samsung. You are assigned to develop a new cell
phone with some innovative features. You want to
add security features. Your colleague Mr. Cheng
wants to add some amusement features. Another
colleague MS Xin wants to change Internet language
which should be compatible with HTML. So, you have
disagreement. You have conflicts. But this is
functional conflict. It will help the company to
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develop a more universal product.

Conflict
Dysfunctional conflict threatens the
organizations interests.
Example:
You do not like Mr. Abbas who is your
colleague. Mr. Abbas is Production Manager.
You are maintenance Manager. You try to take
longer time to repair any machine so that
production will be less. This is harmful for the
organization.
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Conflict
Stages of Conflict
Latent Conflict. Latent conflict is
essentially conflict waiting to happen.
Felt Conflict. Felt conflict is experienced
as discomfort and tension.
Perceived Conflict. Perceived conflict is
the awareness that we are in a conflict
situation.
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Conflict
Stages of Conflict
Manifest Conflict. When conflict is
expressed openly in behavior, it is said to be
manifest. Managers resolve manifest conflict
by removing or correcting its antecedents. It
can also be suppressed.
Conflict Aftermath. Conflict aftermath
may be negative or positive.
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Conflict
Desired Outcomes of Conflict

Agreement: Strive for equitable and

fair agreements that last.

Stronger relationships: Build

bridges of goodwill and trust for the

future.

Learning: Greater self-awareness and

creative problem solving.

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Conflict
Antecedents of Conflict

Incompatible personalities or value

systems.
Overlapping or unclear job
boundaries.
Competition for limited resources.
Interdepartment /intergroup
competition.
Inadequate communication.
Interdependent tasks.

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Conflict
Antecedents of Conflict

Organizational complexity.
Unreasonable or unclear policies,
standards, or rules.
Unreasonable deadlines or extreme time
pressure.
Collective decision making.
Decision making by consensus.
Unmet expectations.
Unresolved or suppressed conflict.

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Conflict
Conflict Management Styles
Competing Involves trying to win at the other partys
expense. Generally leads to antagonism and festering
resentment.
Avoiding Attempts to avoid or smooth over conflict
situations. Generally unproductive.
Accommodating Involves acceding completely to the
other partys wishes or at least cooperating with little or no
attention to ones own interests (sacrificing own interest).
Compromising Involves an attempt to find a satisfactory
middle ground (split the difference)
Collaborating This problem-solving style is mutually
beneficial. Requires trust, open sharing of information, and
creativity.
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Conflict
Fitting Conflict Style to the Situation

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Conflict
Approaches to Conflict Resolution
Focus on
Larger Goals
Bring Parties
Together to Foster
Understanding and
Cooperation
Separate
Conflicting
Parties

Improve
Communications

Reduced
Conflict

Use Third
Parties as
Mediators

Clarify Job
Responsibilities
Develop
Employees
Negotiating Skills

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