PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to revisit the oft cited but as yet not operationalized Weick's sensemaking framework, in order to provide suggested ways forward. Development of a method based on Weick's sensemaking is suggested as a starting point for a heuristic that takes into account missing elements from his original model while operationalizing (critical) sensemaking as an analytical tool for understanding organizational events.Design/methodology/approachFollowing the trajectory of sensemaking, the limitations of Weick's model were discussed (i.e. failure to address power and context) and the critical sensemaking was developed as a method that takes into account agency in context. Empirical studies that apply sensemaking were discussed.FindingsIt is concluded that plausibility and identity construction are key to understanding how some voices are heard over others and through critical sensemaking sense that can be made of such phenomena as the gendering or organizational culture and discriminatory practices in organizations.Practical implicationsA heuristic can help people to understand the socio‐psychological properties involved in behavioural outcomes.Originality/valueCritical sensemaking builds on and operationalizes Weick's original sensemaking approach and demonstrates how it can be used in a range of empirical studies, something that Weick himself suggested was lacking.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to focus on the change experience of a regional health centre that was merged in the late 1990s and shows how organizational talk becomes privileged in the change process, and how some talk becomes meaningful in the constitution of organizational identity. Design/methodology/approach -The paper analyzes the process through which some talk is privileged in the organizational change process. The deconstruction of language used throughout this analysis highlights the relationship between sites of power and the ability to affect sensemaking among organizational members. Using a post-structuralist approach, the authors apply the analytic framework of critical sensemaking (CSM) and critical discourse analysis. Findings -Organizational talk is presented as the enactment of a sensemaking process and insights are offered into the process of how organizational identities are maintained, altered or constrained during change. The discursive effects of the language of change, including the belief that change is actually a discursive process about the mutual constitution of language and identity in a process of making sense of the discourse of change, are discussed.Research limitations/implications -The merging of critical discourse analysis with CSM provides an alternative means of understanding organizational change, including the socio-psychological processes that occur within the privileging of the language of change. Practical implications -For organizational change practitioners, the paper provides insights into the importance of how organizational members make sense of the change language discourse, which can affect how they introduce future change processes. Originality/value -The paper provides a novel way of understanding the change process and furthers the empirical use of (critical) sensemaking as a method.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to contribute to existing critiques of workplace spirituality and organizational culture. The paper links the two by problematising definitions of workplace spirituality that employ a "culture approach" to change, in which the construct is limited to a set of values that gives particular meaning to the workplace. Design/methodology/approach -Properties of Weick's sensemaking model combined with a critical sensemaking approach are used to analyze texts in order to show how a spiritual culture may shape the actions of its members by serving as an implicit form of managerial control. Findings -The paper reveals how some texts, Mitroff and Denton's, in particular, advocate workplace spirituality as necessary for organizations and the individuals who work in them to prosper. Simultaneously, such texts may imply a form of pastoral power, the purpose of which is to re-affirm a positive self-image, due to the cueing effects of language that is voiced in specific contexts. Practical implications -The paper suggests that a cultural approach to understanding workplace spirituality influences how people can make sense of the organization in which they are members. The potential inordinate reverence of work and one's contribution toward enhanced organizational performance is of interest to all members of organizations because it highlights how control is achieved. Originality/value -The paper offers some insights into the conditions that promulgate the linkage between work and spiritual fulfilment, and it promotes the continuing development of critical spirituality in organizations in order to overcome the potential managerial instrumentality that is highlighted in this paper.

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The strength of historical accounts of organizations has been their ability to present the development of a particular company or companies in an apparently seamless, linear and concrete fashion (Rowlinson 2004). Recent academic literature on the subject has approached popular and conventional manners of writing company histories with much skepticism, questioning the particular nature and privileged status of knowledge produced in such accounts. Specifically, it has been suggested that understanding the intent of central historical actors, as well as grounding cultural accounts of company histories in the circumstances of their production can aid in a more holistic and in some cases plural (Boje 1995) understanding of the content of the history (Gillespie 1991; Rowlinson 2004).This paper begins with a review of the current literature on company histories in which two commonly discussed perspectives are outlined and discussed. We first argue that missing from the current perspectives of crafting company histories is an understanding of how the socio-political context in which the company history is crafted comes to influence the actual story told or knowledge produced about the company history. Second, it is suggested that a use of Actor-Network Theory or ANT (Latour 1987) may provide some useful insights as to the socio-political process of writing company histories and the influence of these processes on the nature of knowledge produced. Due to the emphasis on performativity in ANT (Law 1992), the third section of this paper extends the first two sections empirically by drawing on materials from the Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) archive at the University of Miami's Otto Richter Library.1 Through a presentation of the political process of writing a company history of Pan Am, ANT is used to show how the actors involved in crafting the company history negotiate and craft what is now a privileged and taken for granted`factual' company history. Finally, it is proposed that the strength of our approach lies in a recasting of company histories as created and crafted through the negotiated `ordering' (Law 1994) of story-tellers.

Using a critical sensemaking approach, this article explores the process that leads to the formation of different types of masculinity over time. In particular it looks at organizational change programmes, the subsequent representation of organizational men and women in corporate documents and the consequences this has on the gendering of organizational culture. Annual reports from a North American electrical company, Nova Scotia Power, which underwent significant changes between 1972-2001, are used to show how the company's masculinist cultures were reflected in company policies and portrayed in the images and text in these documents. The focus of this article is on how strategic change programmes influenced different notions of masculinity over time, how these understandings were enacted through organizational policies, how this identity was (unconsciously) portrayed in images and text and what effects this had on the gendering of organizational culture.