Sensemaking, communicative distortion and the logic of public inquiry legitimation

Abstract

Gephart, R.P., 1992. Sensemaking, communicative distortion and the logic of public inquiry legitimation. Industrial Crisis Quarterly, 6: 115-135. This paper investigates the public inquiry as a ceremonial legitimator of state responses to technological disaster. The paper addresses: (1) the implications of welfare state theory for understanding the public inquiry; (2) the communicative validity claims and counter-claims made by inquiry participants; (3) how sensemaking practices are used to interpret and transform these claims into institutionally sensible accounts; and (4) how the inquiry legitimates state and corporate responses to technological disaster. To investigate these issues, the paper describes a public inquiry into a fatal pipeline accident and then analyses key segments of inquiry testimony. The paper demonstrates that the inquiry distorted local logics of safety used by members and transformed these into the top-down logics of safety regulators. This distortion preserved the viability of disaster control through state regulation and thereby legitimated state actions and control procedures. The paper concludes by addressing the practical implications of the research.

Making Sense of Changing Hats: A Study of the Nigeria, Vietnam, and Azerbaijan/Kazakhstan Projects within the Norwegian Statoil and British BP Strategic Alliance

“…The alliance project team members' call for their own unique alliance team identity corroborates earlier scholars' discussion of the emotional importance of a strong own identity (Tajfel, 1982;Ashford & Johnson, 2001), which, together with assertions that changing work tasks, location and subsequently also their perspective (Gabarro, 1987;Gephart, 1992;Lave & Wenger, 1991;Starbuck & Milliken 1988), can lead to developing different context specific identities. Across all three projects, they shared a frustration derived from differing corporate cultural differences, such as human resource management systems and structures, leading them to wanting these resolved.…”

“…Furthermore, Gephart (1992) describes how the top management's understanding of a project is largely of a strategic nature, whereas the operational members of the project have an understanding that is largely situational. Thus, the interpretation of events and understanding of meaning can vary by organizational level or, more specifically, by the strategic task orientation of management versus operational members, such as those working together in a department or a project team.…”

The Social Processes of Organizational Sensemaking

“…Organizational disasters and crises have also provided a fruitful context for research into sensemaking among multiple parties (Brown, 2000;Brown & Jones, 2000;Gephart, 1992Gephart, , 1993. Emerging from studies of organizational inquiries is an image of sensemaking in which participants work to find acceptable grounds for the assignment of responsibility.…”

Authoritative Sensemaking in a Public Inquiry Report

“…These questions are significant because of the importance of public inquiries, and the reports they produce, both as locales for the conduct of primary research and as fora which influence public policy. While public inquiries are interesting ceremonial occasions (Gephart 1992) that play important roles in the cultural adjustment stage of critical events (Turner 1976), it is the reports that they produce which are the main focus of attention here. Constituted within discursive practices, inquiry reports may be regarded as totalizing and monological rhetorical constructs (Boje 1995;Nelson et al 1987).…”