Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here for more information on Marketing Management

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Journal of Management Inquiry
This Article
Right arrow Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by O'Leary, M.
Right arrow Articles by Chia, R.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Epistemes and Structures of Sensemaking in Organizational Life

Majella O'Leary

University of Exeter, United Kingdom

Robert Chia

University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom

The issue of organizational sense-making has been much researched and written about in recent years. Yet, how structurally such sense-making attempts are facilitated remains relatively unexamined. In this article, the authors explore the underlying processes to be accomplished, sustained, and extended. `Episteme,' the underlying code of a culture or epoch that governs its language, its logic, its schemas of perception, its values and its techniques, etc., is what makes individual and collective meaning and sense-making possible. In this article, the authors identify three epistemes of organizational sense-making for legitimizing and justifying managerial actions and decision-making within the context of a family-owned newspaper called the Courier. This is done through a study of the justifying narratives employed in the collective sense-making process.

Key Words: positive unconscious • episteme • resemblance • emulation • mathesis • taxinomia • heteroglossia

Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 16, No. 4, 392-406 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1056492607310976
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?