1149: The Heterogeneity of Sensebreaking (13159)

A fundamental premise of the sensemaking literature is that the disruption of sense (commonly referred to as a sensebreaking event) gives rise to meaning voids that, in turn, trigger sensemaking. Despite this theoretical basis, we know surprisingly little about how sensebreaking events impair meaning. In other words, while we know a lot about how individuals make sense, we know comparatively little about how individuals break sense. Using qualitative data collected from healthcare workers, this paper explores the experience of sensebreaking amidst a global crisis—the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings reveal that, despite evincing all the classic characteristics of a sensebreaking event, many of our participants did not perceive the pandemic as such. Among those whose sense was broken, however, we unearthed multiple senses susceptible to disruption and widespread variation in the degrees to which they were disrupted. While we document sensebreaking’s effects on sensemaking and learning, our study also suggests that sensegiving—when it vacillates beyond expectation, contradicts past practice, or is perceived as incommensurate with experience—can paradoxically promote sensebreaking. In this important respect, our study speaks to the difficulty of distributed sensemaking and the fragility of institutional trust during a crisis.

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