We build on Boltanski and Thévenot's theory of justification to account for the ways in which different stakeholder groups actively engage with discourses and objects to maintain the legitimacy of institutions that are relevant to their activity. We use this framework to analyse a controversy emerging from a nuclear accident which involved a large European energy company and sparked public debate on the legitimacy of nuclear power. Based on the findings, we elaborate a process model of institutional repair that explains the role of agents and the structural constraints they face in attempting to maintain legitimacy. The model enhances institutional understandings of legitimacy maintenance in three main respects: it proposes a view of legitimacy maintenance as a controversy-based process progressing through stakeholders' justifications vis-à-vis a public audience; it demonstrates the role of meta-level 'orders of worth' as multiple modalities for agreement which shape stakeholders' public justifications during controversies; and it highlights the capacities that stakeholders deploy in developing robust justifications out of a plurality of forms of agreement.

 This paper explores the role of narratives in organizational inquiry and knowledge work. Following the tenets of the phenomenological method, the paper digs into the 'life world' of organizations in order to capture the taken for granted stream of everyday routines, interaction, and events that constitute both individual and social practices. An empirical case study examines the narrative-based processes of sensemaking and knowledge acquisition in the setting of a traditional pressing plant at Fiat Auto, Italy. The focus of analysis is on how a best performing team engages in the resolution of disruptive occurrences on the shop floor. Through the deconstruction of narratives underlying problem-solving activities, the case identifies a distinctive mode of investigation conceptualized as 'detective stories'. The detective's method highlights the interplay between time and narrative in shaping the interconnected processes of organizational knowledge creation, utilization, and institutionalization. More generally, the findings of the paper stress the importance of conjectural knowledge and common-sensical wisdom in the everyday life of organizations.

Drawing on interviews with 77 high-performing eBay business sellers in France and Belgium, this article investigates the power asymmetries generated by customers’ evaluations in online work settings. Sellers revealed a high degree of sensitivity to negative reviews, which, while infrequent, triggered feelings of anxiety and vulnerability. Their accounts exposed power asymmetries at two levels: the transactional level between sellers and customers and the governance level between sellers and eBay. Our findings highlight three main mechanisms underlying power asymmetries in this context. First, online customer evaluations have created a new form of employee monitoring in which power is exercised through the construction of visibility gaps between buyers and sellers and through an implicit coalition between buyers and the platform owner, who join together in the evaluation procedures. Second, by mediating and objectifying relations, algorithms reproduce power asymmetries among the different categories of actors, thereby constraining human agency. Third, online customer evaluations prompt sellers to exploit their practical knowledge of the algorithm to increase their agency. Through the lived experience of working for an algorithm, our findings contribute new understandings of power and agency in online work settings.

Learning from errors is essential to ensuring organizational safety and improving levels of performance. We consider the interaction between cognition, emotions, and safety culture in the context of a field study on learning from errors in the Italian Air Force. We find that errors often stem from sequential action chains that are concealed in habitual behavior and that become visible only when unforeseen circumstances occur. Furthermore, cognitive appraisal of risky situations triggers emotions of variable intensity that, when rationalized retrospectively, promote the internalization of lessons learned. Finally, cognitive and emotional experiences of errors are grounded in the broader safety culture of an organization, which provides a supportive context for error reporting and encourages the sharing of information and knowledge about error experiences. The analysis further suggests that cognition, emotion, and safety culture interact through sensemaking processes that inform the construction of errors and affect learning outcomes.

In this article we investigate the dynamic connection between individual and social processes of sensemaking in the context of group-based interaction. Drawing on Goffman's theory of face-to-face behaviour, we develop two main arguments. First, the grounding of identity underlying group-based interaction typically involves repeated face games during which participants attempt to influence the patterns of interaction while maintaining a coherent image of self. Second, face games generate an 'interaction order' that has structuring properties and is therefore central to the social construction of sense within a group setting. We illustrate our contribution through an empirical study of face games and sensemaking within a consultancy task force. The study shows that the copresence of participants during group-based interaction is in itself an occasion for sensemaking as it enacts language-based controversies that require composition through shared construction of meaning. In addition, our findings highlight that early impressions generate sticky patterns of interaction that constrain further exchanges and affect the development and outcomes of group sensemaking. A main implication is that positive outcomes of sensemaking are contingent upon the ability of the participants collectively to generate interaction orders that are conducive to working consensus. In this regard, sensegiving mechanisms such as leadership can constructively orient interaction amongs professionals by providing a common set of expectations about behaviours.