# Introduction The title of this series, Foundations for Organisational Science (FOS) denotes a distinctive focus. FOS books are educational aids for mastering the core theories, essential tools, and emerging perspectives that constitute the field of organisational science (broadly defined to include organisational behaviour, organisational theory, human resource management, and business strategy). The primary objective of this series is to support ongoing professional development among established scholars. The series was born out of many long conversations among several colleagues, including Peter Frost, Anne Huff, Rick Mowday, Ben Schneider, Susan Taylor, and Andy Van de Ven, over a number of years. From those discussions we concluded that there was a major gap in our professional literature - characterised by the following comment "If I, or one of my students, want to learn about population ecology, diversification strategies, group dynamics, or personnel selection, we are pretty much limited to academic journal articles or books that are written either for content experts or practitioners. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have access to the teaching notes from a course taught by a master teacher of this topic?" The plans for compiling a set of learning materials focusing on professional development emerged from our extended discussions of common experiences and observations, including the following: 1. While serving as editors of journals, program organizers for professional association meetings, and mentors for new faculty members, we observe wide variance in theoretical knowledge and tool proficiency in our field. To the extent that this outcome reflects available learning opportunities, we hope that this series will help "level the playing field." 2. We have all "taught" in doctoral and junior faculty consortia prior to our professional meetings and are struck by how often these participants comment, "I wish that the rest of the meetings (paper sessions and symposia] were as informative." 3. This observation got us thinking Are our doctoral courses more like paper sessions or doctoral consortia? What type of course would constitute a learning experience analogous to attending a doctoral consortium? What materials would we need to teach such a course? We hope that the books in this series have the "touch and feel" of a doctoral consortium workshop. 4. We all have some exposure to the emerging "virtual university" in which faculty and students at major doctoral programs share their distinctive competencies, either through periodic jointly sponsored seminars or through distance learning technology, and we would like to see these opportunities diffused more broadly. We hope that reading our authors' accounts will be the next best thing to observing them in action. 5. We see some of the master scholars in our field reaching the later stages of their careers and we would like to "bottle up" their experience and insight for future generations. Therefore, our series is an attempt to disseminate "best practices" across space and time. To address these objectives, we ask authors in this series to pass along their "craft knowledge" to students and faculty beyond the boundaries of their local institution by writing from the perspective of a seasoned teacher and mentor. Specifically, we encourage them to invite readers into their classroom (to gain an understanding of the past, present, and future of scholarship in a particular area from the perspective of their first-hand experience), as well as into their office and hallway conversations (to gain insights into the subtlety and nuance of exemplary professional practice). By explicitly focusing on an introductory doctoral seminar setting, we encourage our authors to address the interests and needs of non-expert students and colleagues who are looking for answers to questions such as the following: Why is this topic important? How did it originate and how has it evolved? How is it different from related topics? What do we actually know about this topic? How does one effectively communicate this information to students and practitioners? What are the methodological pitfalls and conceptual dead ends that should be avoided? What are the most/least promising opportunities for theory development and empirical study in this area? What questions/situations/ phenomena are not well-suited for this theory or tool? What is the most interesting work-in-progress? What are the most critical gaps in our current understanding that need to be addressed during the next 5 years? We are pleased to share our dream with you and we encourage your suggestions for how these books can better satisfy your learning needs as a newcomer to the field preparing for prelims or developing a research proposal, or as an established scholar seeking to broaden knowledge and proficiency. **- David A. Whetten** **Series Editor** # Preface This book is written as if Lave and Wenger's (1991) concept of "legitimate peripheral participation" was a valid portrait of learning as a cognitive apprenticeship. The topic on which this book is focused, sensemaking, is best described as a developing set of ideas with explanatory possibilities, rather than as a body of knowledge. This means that the topic exists in the form of an ongoing conversation, which is just how this book is written. The reader who is relatively new to the topic of sensemaking as an object of scholarly inquiry you have, after all, been doing sensemaking all your life-may be at the periphery of the conversation, initially. But this soon will change as you begin to see what the "old timers" are up to and can express yourself in ways they understand, but more important, in ways that enrich and develop the conversation. Said differently, you are being thrown into the middle of the sensemaking conversation with only a vague idea of how it constitutes a perspective. But as you listen, you will begin to see patterns as well as create them, which coincides with a movement from the periphery toward the centre. I have tried to write this book so that, if you read it intensely, lay it aside, and then immediately think about a topic of your own choosing, you will be thinking about that topic for at least a short while, as if it were a topic that involves sensemaking. Those short-term thoughts that bubble up when images from the book are still fresh are the sensemaking perspective in operation. The sensemaking perspective is a frame of mind about frames of mind that is best treated as a set of heuristics rather than as an algorithm. That is why I have sketched it in the form of guides that allow the reader considerable latitude in their application. This approach can be seen, oddly enough, in the many quotations used throughout the book. A book that is about interpretation would be a sham if it were grounded in paraphrase that rubbed the nuance off an author's remarks, discouraged reader exegesis, and squelched diverse readings. All of these remarks may strike you as having an odd quality of tentativeness about them. They strike me the same way. Why? My best guess is that the series of which this book is a part aims to provide researchers with an explicit statement of that which, up to now, has been largely implicit. As we know all too well, conversion of knowledge of acquaintance into knowledge about (Ryle, 1949) is a risky exercise. That is why I think the metaphor of joining an ongoing conversation, even if that conversation is a little more wordy than usual, is the best voice I can find to preserve some richness and nuance in what I make explicit. I am partial to ongoing conversation because, over the years, I have been the beneficiary of an astounding number of good ones. I started to make a list acknowledging those conversational partners to whom I am grateful and was overwhelmed by the impossibility of bounding such a list. That realisation itself is a source of awe and gratitude. I will have to settle for telling Bob Sutton, Dennis Gioia, Kathleen Sutcliffe, and Karen Weick how much I appreciate their feedback on an early draft of this book and Sherry Folsom how much I appreciate her typing assistance and resilience. As for the others, I simply hope that this book occasions rich conversations for them and reaffirms the throb of living for them. Karen and I hope especially for that outcome as our three sons, Kirk, Kyle, and Kris, try, along with other concerned people, to make sense of the next century. Love is at least a place to start.