International audienceTaking Weick's theory of sensemaking as illustrative of a socio-constructionist conception of sensemaking and learning in organization studies, I examine the methodological approaches used in this research. This analysis reveals that, although departing from the structuro-functionalist perspective of conventional cognitive theory, sensemaking research nonetheless aims to establish objective knowledge of these subjective processes. In so doing, it is faced with the interpretive paradox implied in seeking an 'objective science of subjectivity'. Fully acknowledging that studying sensemaking is an active and subjective sense-making process in itself implies that we re-engage in sensemaking processes. The postmodern route, on the one hand, invites us, through deconstruction, to engage against our sensemaking as a way of uncovering both the constitutive and the undecidable character of sensemaking activities. The pragmatist (or participative) route, on the other hand, suggests that, through participative action research, we fully engage in sensemaking with organization members and recognize the socially constructed aspect of all sensemaking activities. Though not without difficulties, these proposals encourage us to make sense differently of sensemaking processes in organizations. The collective dimension of cognition and sensemaking has attracted a great deal of attention in managerial and organizational cognition research since 1980, leading to numerous theoretical, methodological and empirical works on its characteristics, how it has emerged and how i

The cognitive approach of organizations assumes that there exists collective representations in organizations. We critically examine this assumption and propose to adopt a socio-cognitive perspective of collective cognition in organizations. This theoretical stream, that rejects the traditional individual/social dichotomy argues for the study of Social Cognition, which implies a change in the unit of analysis from the individual/social levels to interactions. A collective representation is understood as related to the socio-cognitive dynamics taken place between interacting group members. Communication and influence processes are then critical for the construction of a collective representation. The socio-cognitive perspective and the theory of social influence it proposes may offer new and important insights to everyday thinking and behaving in organizations. They requires however new methodological approaches to study organizational cognition.

International audienceWhat realities do questionnaires and surveys, designed to measure stress and sufferingat work, bring to light? What realities do they conceal? In this research, we considerself-assessment scales and questionnaires as techniques of visibility that contribute tothe construction of knowledge on the ‘suffering subject’ at work. We conducted aqualitative analysis of the questionnaire and survey report conducted by the consultingfirm Technologia for France Telecom Orange, after a spate of suicides in 2008–2009.The results show that: (1) the questionnaire used to measure suffering at work viewsthe subject as someone reflective yet rather passive, and their suffering as resultingfrom an unbalanced relationship with the work environment, (2) the report furtherrestricts this understanding of suffering to the administrative position of the individual,(3) as a consequence, the political, strategic, ideological dimensions and the economicpower struggles affecting work are silenced.Relying on Foucault’s approach to knowledge (savoir), we interpret this narrowconcept of the subject and their surroundings as resulting from an assemblage betweenscientific discourses and visibility techniques; a compromise that conceals debates onthe strategic orientation of the firm

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