Chapter 10: Consulting Processes for Organization Change: A Belief System, Situation Centered, Sensemaking Perspective¹

Anyone who closely observes the real world of organizations recognizes that it is loaded with confusion, stress, uncertainty, politics, trial and error, frustration, disappointment, and emotional disturbances (Mali, 1981). Interestingly, however, the literature on organizations implies a lot more stability, orderliness, systematization, and clarity than is commonly discovered when studied closely (Weick, 1982). Similarly the prevailing rhetoric about management and change is one in which rationality, logic and analysis dominate problem identification and solving, diagnosis, planning and design, and action intervening. Thus the rhetoric of rational goal achievement is often mocked by actual practice. If organizations are more ambiguous, only locally and intermittently cohere, and are less well understood than is usually assumed, management is really just a jungle of ideas, techniques, practices and divergent justifications, and organizational members possess multiple allegiances, multiple identities as well as somewhat unique histories, competencies, needs and wants, how does anyone—especially organizational leaders and their consultants—make sense of joint action? This situation is especially the case if everything in and about organizations is always somewhat political, always somewhat emotional and symbolically laden, and constantly changing.