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AbstractIn this inductive study we explore the relational microdynamics of organizational resilience in adventure racing. Drawing from an organizing lens, we frame resilience as an ongoing process by which organizational actors work together to absorb strain and maintain functioning within dynamically uncertain and adverse environments. Adventure racing exemplifies such a context: stress, technological breakdowns, and untoward environmental conditions are both frequent and unpredictable. By analyzing and triangulating interview data from 103 members of 53 adventure racing teams, we found that racers experienced ongoing adversity punctuated by discrete acute shocks. Moreover, resilience was accomplished and re‐accomplished through processes of interrelating, in which racers worked together to mutually adjust roles and engagement, coordinated through distributed sensemaking. These processes allowed racers to better align with reality from one moment to the next, not only responding to and absorbing adversity as it arose but also shaping their emergent context. The patterns of interrelating established in response to adversity fuelled cycles of resilience or vulnerability and the capability to manage strain over the longer term. Our findings suggest resilience in organizations is more impermanent, enacted and relational than conceptual models currently portray.

Research on organizational safety and reliability largely has emphasized system-level structures and processes neglecting the more micro-level, social processes necessary to enact organizational safety. In this qualitative study we remedy this gap by exploring these processes in the context of wildland fire management. In particular, using interview data gathered from 28 individuals involved in wildland firefighting, we explore the validity of the idea that a deterrent to organizational safety is an inability to redirect ongoing actions once they are underway. The findings suggest four major themes. First, individuals and groups redirect ongoing action as a result of re-evaluating that action. Second, noticing early warning signs, while necessary, is not sufficient to drive change. Third, two social processes — giving voice to concerns and actively seeking alternative perspectives — appear to be key drivers of re-evaluation. Fourth, the process of redirecting action is moderated by two social factors: institutional pressures and self-interest. We discuss the implications of these patterns for organization theory and for future research.

How are decision practices fostered in organizations and how are they linked to decision outcomes? This study addresses these questions by examining one financial institution's efforts to standardize and control decision making across geographically separated organizational units. We argue that decision-maker behavior is situated and is not simply a function of individual choice. Rather, in organizational settings decision-makers are subject to a hierarchy of influences that affect the decision processes they use and their resulting decision choices. To test our ideas, we examined 900 borrower "risk rating" decisions and found general support for our hypotheses. Decision makers were more likely to use the prescribed practice when decisions were important, when the decision target was known, and when the decision maker was located in a larger subunit. Decision makers altered their decision practices in the short term, but in the long term they appeared to partially revert to their earlier practices. Reliance on prescribed practice fostered stability in decisions, but surprisingly appeared to negatively affect future judgments. The findings indicate that organizations can change the more microaspects of decision making, but these changes may be transitory. Moreover the results suggest that decision makers may become complacent when they rely on prescribed decision practices, a tendency that can have untoward consequences for the organizations in which they are embedded.

Mindfulness as depicted by Levinthal and Rerup (2006) involves encoding ambiguous outcomes in ways that influence learning, and encoding stimuli in ways that match context with a repertoire of routines. We add to Levinthal and Rerup's conjectures by examining Western and Eastern versions of mindfulness and how they function as a process of knowing an object. In our expanded view, encoding becomes less central. What becomes more central are activities such as altering the codes, differentiating the codes, introspecting the coding process itself, and, most of all, reducing the overall dependence on coding and codes. Consequently, we shift from Levinthal and Rerup's contrast between mindful and less mindful to a contrast between conceptual and less conceptual. When people move away from conceptuality and encoding, outcomes are affected more by the quality than by the quantity of attention.

Sensemaking involves turning circumstances into a situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard into action. In this paper we take the position that the concept of sensemaking fills important gaps in organizational theory. The seemingly transient nature of sensemaking belies its central role in the determination of human behavior, whether people are acting in formal organizations or elsewhere. Sensemaking is central because it is the primary site where meanings materialize that inform and constrain identity and action. The purpose of this paper is to take stock of the concept of sensemaking. We do so by pinpointing central features of sensemaking, some of which have been explicated but neglected, some of which have been assumed but not made explicit, some of which have changed in significance over time, and some of which have been missing all along or have gone awry. We sense joint enthusiasm to restate sensemaking in ways that make it more future oriented, more action oriented, more macro, more closely tied to organizing, meshed more boldly with identity, more visible, more behaviorally defined, less sedentary and backward looking, more infused with emotion and with issues of sensegiving and persuasion. These key enhancements provide a foundation upon which to build future studies that can strengthen the sensemaking perspective.

In this paper, we propose that performance under uncertainty and ambiguity is enabled by a two‐pronged set of practices enacted by leaders and frontline workers. These contextualized practices fuel performance by enabling teams and organizations to both discern, interpret and make sense of important discrepancies as situations unfold (what we refer to as anomalizing), and to develop a richer understanding of a situation (what we call proactive leader sensemaking). Together, these situation‐specific practices contextualize engagement and promote capabilities to contingently tailor actions to unfolding conditions. We test our hypotheses using data gathered from a sample of wildland firefighters and find strong support for our theorizing. We also identify a set of additional group and situational conditions that provide a more nuanced understanding of factors that contribute to reliable performance under dynamic uncertainty. Together, the findings provide quantitative evidence for the micro‐foundations of effective performance in uncertain contexts.