During the last years, diversity has been a hot topic for both researchers and professionals. In global markets with an increased competition, appropriate management of diversity within an organization might be highly relevant for the success of a company. One kind of diversity is the differences in ages of an organization’s workforce. Today, up to four different generations, each with different characteristics, attitudes, and peculiarities, work together at the workplace. To ensure fruitful, productive, and effective collaboration, cooperation, and cohabitation, leaders are often responsible to manage intergenerational encounters and to delegate tasks in an appropriate way. In fact, leaders and subordinates of different ages and generations have always had to collaborate in organizations. However, especially in today’s times of rising market pressure, increasing complexity and with various increased demands on organizations, a deeper understanding of how leaders might be able to effectively lead their followers and subordinates is of a high value for themselves and organizations.The purpose of this Thesis is it to examine how leaders should behave in intergenerational encounters, i.e. how they should act and communicate to their followers and subordinates of different ages in a way that makes sense to the latter.Within this Thesis, the methodological approach of Grounded Theory is applied. For this purpose, a qualitative research was conducted in which qualitative data was gathered through an examination of the existing literature about leadership, diversity in organizations, and generations. Additionally, eight interviews with leaders, coaches, and professionals from human resource development departments in organizations were conducted. By analyzing those interviews and combining the findings with data from the existing literature, a concept of A Leader’s Generational Intelligence emerged. This concept is composed of the categories Appropriate Behavior Regarding Other Generations, Open Mental Attitude, and Knowledge and Experience. It is assumed that if leaders possess these three elements, they might be able to perform more effectively in intergenerational encounters and might succeed in their attempts to make sense regarding their followers of different ages.The findings of this Thesis may contribute to the discussion about how to appropriately and effectively manage diversity, especially when it comes to generational diversity. For this reason, the outcome of this Thesis might be valuable for future research but also for leaders and professionals.

This study analyzes how some managers frame and make sense of engagement within organizational contexts. It aims to comprehend how their lived experiences of engagement shape their reflexive thoughts, perspectives, and strategies on a daily basis. To generate relevant data, this study used a qualitative approach by conducting semi-structured interviews with ten managers in Ontario, Canada. It made use of a thematic analysis to develop patterns and better understand common perspectives. The results showed a variety of approaches to engagement with no unanimous way of framing it as well as some paradoxes when looking at how managers make sense of this concept. Some managers seem to put forward more tangible words such as care, involvement, and success instead of explicitly evoking engagement. More specifically, from a communication perspective, this study has found that framing and communicating engagement seems to be a complex challenge for managers. They seem to make up their own meaning of engagement, which can greatly vary among individuals.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This research took place as a cognitive exploration of sensemaking of learning analytics at Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana. For the courses with the largest online enrollment, quality standards in the course design are maintained by creating sections from a course design framework. This means all sections have the same starting content and the same framework for assessment. The course design framework is maintained by the curriculum committee composed of program chairs who oversee the program to which the course belongs. This research proposed to develop a learning analytics dashboard to elicit the best practices in instantiating a course design framework from the perspective of the program chair. The Instructional Design Implementation Dashboard, IDID, was designed to address the sensemaking needs of program chairs. The program chairs were asked to make sense of IDID built around the data collected from the course management system and the student information system. IDID leveraged metrics from the user activity and the learner performance from the learning management system, combined with data about the student demographics captured from the student information system. IDID was used to identify highly successful sections and examine the instructor behaviors that might be considered best practices. Data Frame Sensemaking theory was confirmed as an accurate description of the experience of program chairs when using IDID. A revised model of Data Frame Sensemaking theory was developed to explain the interaction of those using the IDID platform.

This study investigates how the establishment of blame becomes a framework for sensemaking in a national policy subsystem. Using the only two fatal accidents in NASA's manned space flight history as case studies, this dissertation examines how the space policy subsystem responded to these two accidents and the process by which culpability was established. This dissertation extends our knowledge of how the blame dynamic operates within a policy subsystem and how, through this assignment of blame, the policy subsystem and the nation makes sense of these tragic events. Three distinct literatures (i.e. policy subsystems, sensemaking, and blame) are brought together to describe this complex blame environment. The conclusions of this research are that the membership of the space policy subsystems increases following a disaster; the locus of the blame attribution rhetoric rests with Congress and the media, which are members of the space policy subsystem; those who were blamed for the Apollo 1 and Challenger disasters were from both NASA and the contractor; and their culpability was publicized. The space policy subsystem assigns the blame to its members and the process of blaming becomes the framework by which the Nation makes sense of the disaster. / Ph. D.

Co-located sensemaking has benefitted from multi-user multi-touch devices such as tabletops and wall-mounted displays. Sensemakers use these displays to establish personal workspaces in which to perform individual sensemaking tasks, while preserving a shared space for the exchange and integration of findings. A large open interaction space allows multiple sensemakers to interact with the display at the same time and to communicate with partners face-to-face. However, collaborative systems must balance the tradeoff between working separately to complete individual work, and the need to communicate and maintain collaborative awareness. Dividing the tasks and working at the same time might encourage more alternative exploration paths, but reduced social exchange could also lead to weak mutual understanding and increased effort for work integration. Furthermore, close collaboration on the same task increases mutual awareness, but the tendency toward one-person dominance or turn-taking interaction underutilizes individual time and space, thereby reducing the benefits of divide-and-conquer. The four studies introduced in this dissertation investigated co-located space factors for notifications and shared visualization as two awareness-supporting techniques to assist individual contribution and teamwork. The research identifies control, awareness, and communication as key co-located space factors to balance cooperation, coordination, contribution, and communication. Knowledge on how notification and visualization techniques affect the co-located factors is explored and summarized. The findings identify design knowledge to better balance the individual work and styles of collaboration. Finally, this dissertation concludes by examining how awareness-supporting techniques affect the relationship between control, awareness, and communication. / Doctor of Philosophy / Co-located sensemaking has benefitted from multi-user multi-touch devices such as tabletops and wall-mounted displays. Sensemakers use these displays to perform individual sensemaking tasks, while preserving a shared space for the exchange and integration of findings. A large open interaction space allows multiple sensemakers to interact with the display at the same time and to communicate with partners face-to-face. However, collaborative systems must balance individual work and collaboration with other partners. Dividing the sensemaking tasks and working at the same time might encourage more alternative exploration paths, but reduced conversation could also lead to weak mutual understanding and increased effort for work integration. Furthermore, close collaboration on the same task increases mutual understanding, but the tendency toward one-person dominance or turn-taking interaction reduces the benefits of divide-and-conquer. Through four studies, this dissertation investigates notifications and shared visualization as two awareness-supporting techniques to assist individual contribution and team work. The research identifies individual control, awareness, and communication as key co-located space factors to balance cooperation, coordination, contribution, and communication. Knowledge on how notification and visualization techniques affect the co-located space factors is explored and summarized, to better design collaborative systems to support co-located sensemaking.

Denna uppsats undersöker implementeringen av styrdokument i organisationer utifrån ett meningsskapande perspektiv. Styrdokument ses som en viktig del i organisationers arbete men tidigare forskning visar att det finns skäl att ifrågasätta hur väl de fungerar i praktiken. Det föreligger svårigheter när samtliga organisationsmedlemmar på alla organisatoriska nivåer ska skapa förståelse runt samma innehåll.       Under 2011 infördes en nationell värdegrund för äldreomsorgen i Sverige. Detta har aktualiserat arbetet med styrdokument och värdegrund inom äldreomsorgen. Den empiriska bakgrunden till denna studie är detta arbete men studien avgränsas till det innehåll som gäller bemötande. Detta område är särskilt intressant då begreppet bemötande kan ha olika innebörd för olika personer samt beroende på kontexten. Studien undersöker därför medarbetarnas förståelse av innehållet i styrdokument och hur förståelsen översätts i arbetet.       I uppsatsen presenteras teori beträffande styrdokument, ledarskap, organisationslärande, sensemaking och organisationskultur. Viktiga poänger i detta kapitel är: Att styrdokument måste konkretiseras för att kunna användas. Att ledarskap allt mer handlar om kommunikation och att förmedla idéer och värderingar. Att lärande är en social konstruktionsprocess och att kunskap är subjektiv. Att organisationskultur är gemensamma föreställningar, skapade genom kommunikation. Att sensemaking är en ofullständig process i vilken människor ständigt försöker förstå sin omvärld.    Undersökningen genomfördes som en fallstudie på ett vårdboende i Karlstad kommun. Tio medarbetare samt enhetschefen intervjuades. Intervjuerna med medarbetarna utgick ifrån förutbestämda teman vilka var Bemötande, Styrdokument, Ledarskap, kultur och lärande, samt bakgrundsfrågor. Dessutom diskuterades vissa citat ur styrdokument under intervjuerna.       På vårdboendet har medarbetarna arbetat mycket med organisationens styrdokument. Trots det visar resultatet från intervjuerna på att majoriteten av respondenterna var osäkra på innehållet i styrdokument. De har svårt att uttrycka sin förståelse vilket kan bero på att den är implicit kunskap. Istället uppgav de att de lärde sig av varandra eller att de arbetade efter sunt förnuft. Styrdokumenten kändes långt borta i det vardagliga arbetet och respondenterna verkar ha ersatt dem med en gemensam förståelse om hur      4   deras arbete ska utföras. Dock säger flera att styrdokument kan fungera som ett verktyg för reflektion vilket innebär att styrdokumenten ändå är en faktor vid skapandet av den förståelsen. I denna process har enhetschefen vid det undersökta vårdboendet en viktig roll.       Slutsatsen blir att medarbetarnas förståelse för styrdokument är indirekt och i hög grad beroende av organisationskultur och kommunikation med enhetschefen. Implementeringen eller översättningen sker via den gemensamma förståelsen, det vill säga genom till exempel APT och samtal. / This essay investigates the implementation of steering documents within organizations from a sensemaking perspective. Steering documents are seen as an important part of the organizations work but previous research shows that there are reason to question how well this works in practice. There seems to be difficulties when majority of members of the organization on all organizational levels are meant to create understanding around same content.  During 2011, a national value system of the elder health care was implemented in Sweden. This has highlighted the work of the steering document and values within the elder health care.  The empirical background to this study is this work with the national value but the study is limited to the content regarding patient encounter. This subject is especially interesting when the meaning of encounter can have a different meaning to different people depending on the context.  That’s why this study investigates co-workers understanding of the content in the steering document and how the understanding is translated into work.   In the essay theory is presented regarding the steering document, leadership, organizational learning, sensemaking and organizational culture.  Important points in this chapter are: that steering document must be concretized to be used. That leadership is increasingly all about communication and to mediate ideas and values. That learning is a social construction process and that knowledge is subjective. That organizational culture is same visions created through communication. That sensemaking is an incomplete process in which people are constantly trying to understand their world. This investigation was made as a case study at a senior living in Karlstad. Ten co-workers and their head director were interviewed. The interviews with the co-workers were taken from prepared themes which where encounter, steering document, leadership, culture and learning and background questions. Also some quotes from the steering document were discussed during the interviews.  The co-workers at the senior living have worked a lot with the organizational steering document. Still the result from the interviews shows that the majority of the workers where not sure of it´s content. They have difficulties to express their understandings,      6   which may be because it is implicit knowledge. Instead they explained that they have learned from each other or that they were working for common sense.  Steering document felt far away within everyday work and co-workers have replaced it with a common understanding of how their job should be done. However some co- workers say that steering document works as a tool for reflection which means that steering document is a factor for creating understanding. In this process the head director has got a greater roll. Conclusion is that the co-workers understanding for the steering document is indirect and largely dependent on organizational culture and communication with the head director. Implement or translation happens thru the common understanding, which means through APT and discussions.

Contemporary crisis literature often returns to [in]famous and extraordinary cases with a recurring conclusion of how ill-irrational human factors lead to disastrous escalation. I argue in every crisis observed, there are human traits and paradoxes visible that commit itself to survival that can help us to explain how and why escalation occur. To enable escalation we inevitably construct realities to define aims to solve the crisis. Still if these realities can be inherently viewed as illusionistic they are inevitable and inherent to our mental states. So far there is a lacuna about how actors embody the experience of everyday life and crisis as such. Lately, management literature starts to appreciate how rationality often begins with irrational impulses, but also how crisis is socially materialized that involves how escalation builds up. Finally, how it is incorporated into our cognitive frames that constitutes reality. From an embodied perspective, this thesis aims to answer two questions, how does escalation occur and why do we escalate? Based on data from 2016, present thesis conducted an in-depth case study to explore an impromptu rescue mission on Everest. Method used was a video ethnography of 120 video clips that was analyzed through grounded theory. Specifically targeting verbal and non-verbal communication between members which is referred as a study of embodied cognition. Findings show how we tend to thinking from previous patterns from previous events. Emotions and embodiment are influential but equally important in the process, emotions are communicated that commit actions that shapes the events to become alive. Why it accomplishes is through constant reframing. I argue that our cognitive frame is a fabrication and that the embodiment helps us to revise the reality and emotions. The constant revision is accomplished since our interpretation is intimately connected to the existing fabric that also determines the emotional state. I finally propose a concept that illustrate how the fabrication process goes in loops. The conclusion of this thesis suggests emotions as prominent when and how we experience the world, the embodied dimensions are highly influential and important which not only triggers but airborne the mental cognition by making the reality come “alive”.

In this study I investigate how healthcare workers, involved in the Texas Medicaid program as healthcare providers, cope with four workplace constraints. Healthcare workers are constrained by: 1) the policies and practices of the Medicaid program, 2) their own individual and professional values towards indigent care, 3) the rules and policies of their own organization and business type, and 4) the Medicaid patients with whom they interact. I use structuration theory and sensemaking to better understand how these professionals cope with these challenging constraints.Using in depth interviews of 36 private and public healthcare professionals from four unique fields of service (i.e., dental, optical, pediatric, mental health) I applied a modified grounded theory approach to understand: 1) how professionals make sense of the four Medicaid constraints described above, 2) how sensemaking strategies help or hinder professional performance, and 3) how sensemaking communication shapes professional identity and work perceptions. Healthcare workers viewed Medicaid support staff as "flippant", "rude", incompetent, unhelpful, and unreliable. However, providers believed Medicaid was equal to or better than other insurance companies for speed and reliability of payment. While they unanimously identified with providing indigent healthcare, they also clashed with the Medicaid program as a vehicle for those services. Private practices framed Medicaid as a liability while public non-profit organizations relied on Medicaid as a primary source of revenue. Providers agreed that Medicaid patients had poor follow-through, a high no-show rate, were undisciplined, and crowded provider offices with unscheduled family members. Healthcare workers enacted self-reliance as individuals, by networking with other Medicaid providers, and by relying on in-house experts. They also engaged in discursive strategies by minimizing, blaming, and detaching. They viewed themselves as disciplinarians, problem-solvers, advocates, and benefactors. Theoretically, this study develops the concept of identity regions and reframes workplace constraints as necessary identity structures. It also suggests that how Medicaid patients behave may have a more damaging impact on whether providers are willing to work with Medicaid than low reimbursement rates.

Employees face many challenges as they attempt to fulfill the often intense and conflicting expectations of their professional roles within the culture of an organization for which they perform paid work. These demands include traversing a consistent stream of organizational change (Lewis, 2011), navigating complex coworker relationships (Sias, 2009), and meeting the often intense and even abusive demands of organizational managers and leaders (Caldwell & Canuto-Carranco, 2010). As a result of this cultural intensity, organizational members can begin considering exit (Jablin, 1987, 2001) very early in their tenure. This study explores Jablin’s Model of Assimilation (1987, 2001) as a framework for identifying the types of events, observations and concerns that facilitate exit-related sensemaking (Weick, 1995) and, ultimately, a decision to leave an organization. Findings indicate that organizational exit (Jablin, 1987, 2001) is not simply a response to a single “straw that broke the camel’s back” event. Rather, organizational exit is a complex, evolving process resulting from a web of observations and experiences occurring over time within the organization. Based on interviews with 61 people who voluntarily left an organization in a post-recession economy (2010—2014), findings indicate surprising similarities and differences across industries in both the organizational factors leading up to exit and individuals’ exit experiences. By tracing the origins of exit back through the socialization processes experienced by exiting organizational members, this study fills a gap in organizational exit research, defining exit not as a discrete end-stage event, but rather as an ongoing, highly communicative and personalized process based on recursive loops of sensemaking (Weick, 1995) that build over the course of a member’s tenure, resulting in a choice to leave the organization. / text

Sensemaking (i.e. the process of deriving meaning from complex information to make decisions) is often cited as an important and challenging activity for collaborative technology. A key element to the success of collaborative sensemaking is effective coordination and communication within the team. It requires team members to divide the task load, communicate findings and discuss the results. Sensemaking is one of the human activities involved in visual analytics (i.e. the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces). The inherent complexity of the sensemaking process imposes many challenges for designers. Therefore, providing effective tool support for collaborative sensemaking is a multifaceted and complex problem. Such tools should provide support for visualization as well as communication and coordination. Analysts need to organize their findings, hypotheses, and evidence, share that information with their collaborators, and coordinate work activities amongst members of the team. Sharing externalizations (i.e. any information related to the course of analysis such as insights, hypotheses, to-do lists, reminders, etc recorded in the form of note/ annotation) could increase awareness and assist team members to better communicate and coordinate their work activities. However, we currently know very little about how to provide tool support for this sort of sharing. This thesis is structured around three major phases. It consists of a series of studies to better understand collaborative Visual Analytics (VA) processes and challenges, and empirically evaluate design ideas for supporting collaborative sensemaking. I investigate how collaborative sensemaking can be supported during visual analytics by a small team of collocated analysts. In the first phase of this research, I conducted an observational study to better understand the process of sensemaking during collaborative visual analytics as well as identify challenges and further requirements. This study enabled me to develop a deeper understanding of the collocated collaborative visual analytics process and activities involved. I found that record-keeping plays a critical role in the overall process of collaborative visual analytics. Record-keeping involves recording any information related to the analysis task including visualization snapshots, system states, notes, annotations and any other material for further analysis such as reminders and to-do lists. Based on my observations, I proposed a characterization of activities during collaborative visual analytics that encompasses record-keeping as one of the main activities. In addition, I characterized notes according to their content, scope, and usage, and described how they fit into a process of collaborative data analysis. Then, I derived guidelines to improve the design of record-keeping functionality for collocated collaborative visual analytics tools. One of the main design implications of my observational study was to integrate record-keeping functionality into a collaborative visual analytics tool. In order to examine how this feature should be integrated with current VA tools, in the second phase of this research, I designed, developed and evaluated a tool, CoSpaces (Collaborative Spaces), tailor-made for collocated collaborative data analysis on large interactive surfaces. Based on the result of a user study with this tool, I characterized users' actions on visual record-keeping as well as their key intentions for each action. In addition, I proposed further design guidelines such as providing various views of recorded material, showing manually saved rather than automatically saved items by default, enabling people to review collaborators' work unobtrusively, and automatically recommending items related to a user's analytical task. In the third phase, I took supporting record-keeping activities in the context of collaborative sensemaking a step further to investigate how this support should be designed to facilitate collaboration. To this end, I explored how automatic discovery and linking of common work can be employed within a ``collaborative thinking space'' (i.e. a space to enable analysts to record and organize findings, evidence, and hypotheses, also facilitate the process of sharing findings amongst collaborators), to facilitate synchronous collaborative sensemaking activities in visual analytics. The main goal of this phase was to provide an environment for analysts to record, organize, share and connect externalizations. I expected that this would increase awareness among team members and in turn would enhance communication and coordination of activities. I designed, implemented and evaluated a new tool, CLIP (Collaborative Intelligence Pad), that extends earlier thinking spaces by integrating new features that reveal relationships between collaborators' findings. Comparing CLIP versus a baseline tool demonstrated that linking collaborators' work led to significant improvement in analytical outcomes at a collaborative intelligence task. Groups using CLIP were also able to more effectively coordinate their work, and held more discussion of their findings and hypotheses. Based on this study, I proposed design guidelines collaborative VA tools. In summary, I contribute an understanding for how analysts use VA tools during collocated collaboration. Through a series of observational user studies, I investigated how we can better support this complex process. More specifically, I empirically studied recording and sharing of analytical results. For this purpose, I implemented and evaluated two systems to be able to understand the effects of these tools on collaboration mechanics. These user studies along with various literature surveys on each specific topic resulted in a collection of guidelines for supporting and sharing externalizations. In addition, I proposed and evaluated several mechanisms to increase awareness among team members, resulting in more effective coordination and communication during the collaborative sensemaking process. The most novel contributions of this research are the identification and subsequent characterization of note taking behaviours as an important component of visual data exploration and analysis. Moreover, the design and evaluation of CLIP, providing preliminary evidence in support of automatically identifying and presenting relationships between collaborators' findings. / Graduate / 0984 / narges.mahyar@gmail.com