Taking off the heat: Narrative sensemaking in post-crisis inquiry reports

Organization Studies

Volumn 30, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 377-396

  Boudes, Thierry ^a   Laroche, Hervé ^a  

^a ESCP EUROPE   (France)

Author keywords

Crisis; Heat wave; Inquiry report; Narrative analysis; Sensemaking

Indexed keywords

EID: 63749117277     PISSN: 01708406     EISSN: 17413044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0170840608101141     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. Barry, David, and Michael Elmes 1997 'Strategy retold: Toward a narrative view of strategic discourse'. Academy of Management Review 22/2: 429-452.
2. Boin, Arjen, Paul T. Hart, Eric Stern, and Bengt Sundelius 2005 The politics of crisis management: Public leadership under pressure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Boje, David M. 2001 Narrative methods for organizational communication and research London: Sage.
4. Boyce, Mary E. 1995 'Collective centring and collective sense-making in the stories and storytelling of one organization'. Organization Studies 16 / 1: 107-137.
5. Boyce, Mary E. 1996 'Organisational story and storytelling: A critical review'. Journal of Organizational Change Management 9/5: 5-26.
6. BrCurrency signndström, Anika, and Sanneke L. Kuipers 2003 'From 'normal incidents' to political crises: Understanding the selective politicization of policy failures'. Government and Opposition 38: 279-305.
7. Brown, Andrew D. 2000 'Making sense of inquiry sensemaking'. Journal of Management Studies 37 / 1: 45-75.
8. Brown, Andrew D. 2004 'Authoritative sensemaking in a public inquiry report'. Organization Studies 25 (1). 95-112.
9. Brown, Andrew D. 2005 'Making sense of the collapse of Barings Bank'. Human Relations 58 / 12: 1579-1604.
10. Brown, Andrew D., and Matthew Jones 2000 'Honourable members and dishonourable deeds: Sensemaking, impression management and legitimation in the "arms to Iraq affair'''. Human Relations 53 / 5: 655-689.
11. Bruner, Jerome 2002 Making stories: Law, literature, life. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
12. Clarke, Lee 1999 Mission improbable: Using fantasy documents to tame disaster. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
13. Cooren, François 2000 The organizing property of communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
14. Cooren, François 2001 'Translation and articulation in the organization of coalitions: The Great Whale River case'. Communication Theory 11/2: 178-200.
15. Cooren, François, and Gail T. Fairhurst 2004 'Speech timing and spacing: The phenomenon of organizational closure'. Organization 11 / 6: 793-824.
16. Cunliffe, Ann L., John T. Luhman, and David M. Boje 2004 'Narrative temporality: Implications for organizational research'. Organization Studies 25 / 2: 261-286.
17. Currie, Mark 1998 Postmodern narrative theory. London: Macmillan.
18. Czarniawska-Joerges, Barbara 1999 Writing management: Organization theory as a literary genre. York: Oxford University Press.
19. Fairclough, Norman 2005 'Discourse analysis in organization studies: The case for critical realism'. Organization Studies 26/6: 915-939.
20. Feldman, Martha S., and Kaj Sköldberg 2002 'Stories and the rhetoric of contrariety: Subtexts of organizing (change)'. Culture and Organization 8 / 4: 275-292.
21. Fisher, Walter, R. 1984 'Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument'. Communication Monographs 51: 1-22.
22. Gephardt, Robert P. Jr 1993 'The textual approach: Risk and blame in disaster sensemaking'. Academy of Management Journal 36 / 6: 1465-1514.
23. Goldberg, David 2005 'The narrative and the bureaucratic: An analysis of an independent inquiry report into homicide'. The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology 16: 149-166.
24. Greimas, Algirdas J. 1966 Sémantique structurale. Paris: Larousse.
25. Greimas, Algirdas 1987 On meaning: Selected writings in semiotic theory (trans. Paul J Perron and Frank H. Collins). London: Frances Pinter.
26. Hébert, Louis 2006 'Le carré sémiotique' in: Signo. Louis Hébert (ed.). Québec: Rimouski. http://www.signosemio.com.
27. Herman, David 2002 Story logic. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
28. Hutter, Bridget M. 2005 '''Ways of seeing": Understandings of risk in organizational settings' in: Organizational encounters with risk. M. Power and B. Hutter (eds), 67-91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
29. Ingersoll, Virginia H., and Guy B. Adams 1992 'The child is "father" to the manager: Images of organizations in US children's literature'. Organization Studies 13 / 4: 497-519.
30. Jennings, P. Devereaux, and Royston Greenwood 2003 'Constructing the iron cage: Institutional theory and enactment' in Debating organization: Point-counterpoint in organization studies. Robert Westwood and Stewart R. Clegg (eds), 195-207. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
31. Kermode, Frank 1967 The sense of an ending. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
32. Kofman-Bos, Celesta, Susann Ullberg, and Paul 't Hart 2005 'The long shadow of disaster: Memory and politics in Holland and Sweden'. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 23 / 1: 5-26.
33. Lagadec, Patrick 2004 'Understanding the French 2003 heat wave experience: Beyond the heat, a multi-layered challenge'. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 12/4: 160-169.
34. Manthorpe, Jill, and Nicky Stanley (eds) 2004 The age of the inquiry: Learning and blaming in health and social care. London: Routledge.
35. Martens, Martin L., Jennifer Jennings, and P. Devereaux Jennings 2007 'Do the stories they tell get them the money they need? The impact of strategy narratives on resource acquisition'. Academy of Management Journal 50 / 5: 1107-1132.
36. Mink, Louis, O. 1970 'History and fiction as modes of comprehension'. New Literary History 1: 541-558.
37. Mumby, Dennis, K. 1993 Narrative and social control: Critical perspectives. Newbury: Sage.
38. Nathan, Maria L. 2004 'How past becomes prologue: A sensemaking interpretation of the hindsight-foresight relationship given the circumstances of crisis'. Futures 36 / 2: 181-199.
39. Orr, Julian E. 1996 Talking about machines: An ethnography of a modern job. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
40. Patriotta, Gerardo 2003 'Sensemaking on the shop floor: Narratives of knowledge in organizations'. Journal of Management Studies 40/2: 349-375.
41. Pitt, Martyn 1998 'A tale of two gladiators: 'Reading' entrepreneurs as texts'. Organization Studies 19/3: 387-414.
42. Polkinghorne, Donald E. 1988 Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
43. Propp, Vladimir 1927 Morphology of the folktale, 2 nd edn, 1968 (trans. Laurence Scott). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
44. Rhodes, Carl. and Andrew D. Brown 2005 'Narrative, organizations and research'. International Journal of Management Reviews 7 / 3: 167-188.
45. Ricoeur, Paul 1984 Time and narrative, Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
46. Snook, Scott A. 2000 Friendly fire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
47. Starbuck, William H., and Moshe F. Farjoun (eds) 2005 Organization at the limit: Lessons from the Columbia disaster. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
48. Taylor, James R., and Elizabeth J. Van Emery 2000 The emergent organization: Communication as its site and surface. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
49. Thirion, Xavier, David Debensason, Jean-Christopher Delarozire, and Jean-Louis San Marco 2005 'August 2003: Reflections on a French summer disaster'. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 13 / 4: 153-158.
50. Vaughan, Diane 1996 The Challenger launch decision - Risky technology, culture, and deviance at NASA. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
51. Warner, Joanne 2006 'Inquiry reports as active texts and their function in relation to professional practice in mental health'. Health, Risk and Society 8/3 ): 223-237.
52. Weick, Karl E. 1993 'The collapse of sensemaking in organizations: The Mann Gulch disaster'. Administrative Science Quarterly 38 / 4: 628-652.
53. Weick, Karl E. 1995 Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
54. Weick, Karl E., and Larry D Browning 1986 'Argument and narration in organizational communication'. Journal of Management 12: 243-259.
55. Weick, Karl E., Kathleen Sutcliffe, and David Obstfeld 2005 'Organizing and the process of sensemaking'. Organization Science 16 / 4: 409-421.
56. Weiner, Bernard 1995 Judgments of responsibility: A foundation for a theory of social conduct. New York: The Guilford Press.
57. White, Hayden 1987 The content of the form. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
58. Wilkins, Alan L. 1984 'The creation of company cultures: The role of stories and human resource systems'. Human Resource Management 23 / 1: 41-60.