The Multifaceted Sensemaking Theory: A Systematic Literature Review and Content Analysis on Sensemaking

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper offers a comprehensive review of the literature. The lit review is well presented but the tables are a little distracting, this is something I do often note for such papers that focus on articulating themes from literature. In the text the authors might do more to address the theoretical directions opposed to relying on tables. The tables can stay but the theories need articulated more in the text. The lit review could have more justification, consider why is this needed for this topic, you could then align the use of and importance of the method more to the paper objectives. Again the results are table heavy as one might expect given your approach, but do try and guide the reader through clearer implications, both theoretically, practically and perhaps even policy related, this might help bring your paper full circle and leave the reader with new directions through critically informed recommendations.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer #1:

In the Introduction section, we highlight the need and justification for the current research. The following states this need:

“Because sensemaking has grown into a multidisciplinary field, it contains streams of research from several distinct disciplines. When this occurs, as with any new focus of research, it becomes important to synthesize scholarship to find commonalities and differences from all disciplines involved. Urquhart, et al. [4] highlighted this need in the following: “Reviews emphasize the need for meta-synthesis of research” (p. 1). In Dervin and Naumer's [5] review, they presented that there were “inconsistencies, even contradictions, between the various approaches” (p. 4121) to sensemaking.”

The tables could have been included as Appendixes but we selected to include them in the article so that all processes and procedures taken to get to the final synthesis were transparent.

To further clarify the Tables in the article, we provided a brief summary of the Tables at the beginning of the “Results and Discussion” section. This two paragraph summary is listed below:

“The Results section includes several tables that highlight the topic modeling stages that led to the synthesized multifaceted sensemaking theory presented in the current article. Table 4 provides a list of the common words from the literature, showing “sensemaking” as the most common word followed by “sense”. Tables 5 and 6 show the top 20 topics from two types of analyses (Mallet-wrapper topics, Vectorizer topics). Each topic (20 per technique, 40 total) were analyzed by reviewing the definitions of each term. Table 7 provides an example for “Topic 1” from the Mallet-wrapper topics to show how this process was performed. This example shown in Table 7 was identified as “Interpretation (meaning making).”

A synthesis of the topics and analyses were provided in Tables 8 and 9. These two tables provide the top five topics from each of the two sets of topics with defining characteristics. Table 8 provides a synthesis of the top five topics and defining characteristics from the Mallet-wrapper topics, and Table 9 from the Vectorizer topics. These two sets of topics were then synthesized into one common set of topics shown in Table 10. Table 10 provides the nine components to the multifaceted sensemaking theory (sensing, meaning making, sensegiving, becoming, agency, counterfactuals, future-scoping, movement, impact). Table 11 provides a comparative analysis of the components of the multifaceted sensemaking theory with other identified sensemaking frameworks and models.”

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thanks for giving me a chance to read this manuscript, “The Multifaceted Sensemaking Theory: A Systematic Literature Review and Content Analysis on Sensemaking”. The current paper tried to explore these sensemaking models and theories to better exmiane the definition of sensemaking/sensemaking and the process sensemaking practiced today compared to the original sensemaking frameworks, models, and theories.

This is an interesting and significant topic in the field of Sensemaking Theory. However, there are minor issues in the current manuscript that should be carefully addressed to be further considered.

1.      Method

·        Authors are advised to follow the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) to form a chart (Song and Luximon 2020).

·        PRISMA focuses on ways in which authors can ensure a transparent and complete reporting of this type of research. The PRISMA standard superseded the earlier QUOROM standard. It offers the replicability of a systematic literature review. Researchers have to figure out research objectives that answer the research question, states the keywords, a set of exclusion and inclusion criteria. In the review stage, relevant articles were searched, irrelevant ones are removed. Articles are analyzed according to some pre-defined categories.

Ref:

Song, Y., & Luximon, Y. (2020). Trust in AI agent: A systematic review of facial anthropomorphic trustworthiness for social robot design. Sensors, 20(18), 5087.

2.      Conclusion

·        Authors might change the title of “summary” into “conclusion”.

To sum up, I personally like this paper very much. However, the problems should be addressed in order to be further considered. Hope these suggestions help.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer #2:

The initial review of the literature found in the section titled “Literature Review” concentrated primarily on the articles highlighted from the Oxford Bibliographies entry on sense-making and sense making from the five researchers highlighted; Dervin, Klein, Wick, Snowden, Russell. We reviewed the articles referenced in the bibliography entry and followed up with additional articles listed in the references of the original researcher’s publications (snowball technique). This initial review provided an overview of the originators of sensemaking. To clarify this better we included the following at the end of the first paragraph in the “Literature Review” section:

“This literature provides a review of the literature captured in the Oxford Bibliographies sense-making/sensemaking entry with a snowball technique to capture additional sources from the reference sections of the articles from the five main researchers highlighted. A systematic review process was followed to collect literature for the topic modeling and data analytic techniques presented in the Methodology section in the current study.”

From the initial literature review, highlighted above, we then followed up with topic modeling and data analysis of current literature that used “sensemaking” as the keyword. The literature review selected for the topic modeling and data analysis was selected using Prisma transparency recommendations and is listed in the following paragraph found in the Methodology section.

“Research articles were obtained from the Web of Science database using the keywords “sense-making” OR “sensemaking.” The initial search looked for these keywords in the “title” of the database’s articles. There was a total of 1,583 articles from this initial search phase.

To reduce the number of articles, the researchers narrowed the search to five years (2018 to 2022). This resulted in 639 articles. Selecting articles in “English” reduced the number of articles to 625. Researchers then selected the following categories from the Web of Science database: “Business” to reflect Snowden and Weick’s sensemaking theories; “Communication” to reflect Dervin’s sensemaking theory; “Information Science Library Science” to reflect Russell’s theory; “Psychology Applied” to represent Klein’s theory. Reducing the number of articles to 165. Finally, researchers selected the following research areas from the Web of Science database: “Communication” and “Information Science Library Science.” This reduced the total number of articles to 68 articles. Eight articles could not be accessed or duplicated. The total number of articles used for the text analysis was 60.”

We chose not to include a table, as provided in Prisma recommendations, as the main purpose was to select literature for the topic modeling and data analysis. The same information asked for by Prisma is included in this paragraph relating to how the literature was obtained. The inclusion and exclusion criteria, however, were conducted in the topic modeling techniques as these techniques focus primarily on how sensemaking was represented in this body of literature (themes, topics, meanings).

Similar information was provided in the section “4.3. A Multifaceted Sensemaking Theory” as we summarized the previous research activities (provided after Table 10):

“As a multifaceted theory of sensemaking, the goal was to (a) compile already existing frameworks, models, and theories from the sensemaking field of study and practice, and (b) to compare or combine them with current research and practice from the literature.

The first part was conducted in the literature review that originated with Urquhart, Lam, Cheok and Dervin [4] “Oxford Bibliographies” on sense-making/sensemaking. This review of the literature summarized literature from the five sensemaking theorists (Dervin, Klein, Russell, Snowden, Weick) as highlighted in the encyclopedia entry. This review provided several sensemaking definitions, comparisons between definitions and theories, an overview of sensemaking’s ontological roots, and highlighted the characteristics of several sensemaking theories.

The second part was conducted by the text analysis of current research on “sense-making” and “sensemaking” from the Web of Science database. Topic modeling was conducted on the data which generated two groupings of topics (see Tables 8 & 9). These topics were analyzed, defined, and combined into the multifaceted sensemaking theory presented in Table 10.”

We did change the last section from “Summary” to “Conclusion.”