Abstract
This study examined strange experiences in the workplace from an interpretive-empirical framework. The goal of this study was to examine employee interpretation of strange, unusual, and unexpected workplace experiences. Interviews were conducted with 22 employees of a large national insurance firm in the Midwest that were intended to capture the story theme, employee response, attributions or assignments of causes, and degree of organizational change. Results indicated that the most common strangeness experience themes were lapse or lack of professionalism, general uncertainty, threat to the internal organizational environment, and embarrassment. Employee responses to strange experiences included greater efforts toward information seeking, assistance giving, use of humor, and accommodation to others in the organization. Causal attributions revolved around themes of communication, organizational change, and the nature of personal problems in the workplace. Finally, change themes included “no changes,” consequences for employee actions, and improvements (improved communication, teamwork, problem-solving, conflict management).
Not all stories about organizational experiences fall neatly into a coherent whole, where all elements of the narrative are carefully orchestrated. Research efforts can capture a wide range of worker experiences and seek to understand both the complexity of the experience and the context of the organizational reality (see Luhman, 2005), but capturing the whole or even an agreed-upon meaning of organizational events can often prove elusive. Organization theorist Karl Weick’s (1995, 2001) sensemaking perspective identifies numerous possible avenues for exploring interpretations of organizational experiences, often framed in story or narrative form. According to Weick, making sense of organizational reality is often retrospective, socially derived, ongoing (where members interpret and reinterpret meaningful events over time), and often surprising or unexpected. They are stories of strangeness within the organization.
Previous research on storytelling indicates that stories serve multiple functions within organizational environments. For example, stories can create and reflect culture (Kelly, 1985; Weick & Browning, 1986); help frame challenges with organizational diversity (Barker & Gower, 2010); unveil relationships among motives, stories, and language use in unfolding human dramas (Burke, 1984, 1985); reveal organizational values (Meyer, 1995); illuminate organizational dualities such as equality and inequality or control versus lack of control (Martin, Feldman, Hatch, & Sitkin, 1983); and identify workplace beliefs and ideologies (Cotter & Marschall, 2006) . Brown (1985, 1990) suggested that stories function to help reduce uncertainty, socialize new members, and aid in the management of meaning. Stories are symbolic representations of the events and experiences of organizational members and, as such, are communicative in nature (Browning, 1992). However, as Colville, Brown, and Pye (2012) argued, storytelling and sensemaking are not synonymous, although one may imply the other.
Whether in story form or as modes of meaning construction, sensemaking processes are efforts toward coherence and meaning making that allow the sensemaker to link that which is strange or unusual with the usual, routine, or familiar. Organizational sensemaking reveals unexpected and unanticipated events that have captured the attention of employees and are often construed as a contrast against more normalized organizational practices and routines (see Weick, 1995). Christianson, Farkas, Sutcliffe, and Weick (2009) identify both rare events and interruptions in normative and expected workplace routines as additional framing devices for organizational sensemaking. These periods of disjunction from routine practices may garner heightened attention and focus of employees and thus are considered “occasions for sensemaking” (Weick, 1995, p. 86). Although any organizational event or experience may be the subject of an employee narrative (e.g., stories may focus on routines, habits, and rules), Weick (1995) argued that stories are often told to make the unexpected expected or manageable (see also Orr, 1987). Organizational stories are often construed as collective memory for the organization (Brown, 1985) and provide information about organizational cultures. For example, Bird (2007) explored narratives of female workers as a way to illuminate the link between storytelling and organizational identity. Although numerous organizational story types and forms have been identified, previous research has not explored strangeness empirically within the context of organizational experience. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to inductively explore sensemaking of strange and/or unusual workplace experiences and to understand how organizational members describe, account for, and respond to strange organizational experiences and events.
Strangeness in organizations is defined as any experience or event that the sensemaker regards as odd, unusual, or unexpected. Strangeness encompasses not only uncertainty and ambiguity but also unexpected events that are odd and not in keeping with existing ways of understanding organizational environments. Examining strange workplace experiences can provide insight into (a) types of strange workplace experiences, (b) causes and attributions made about strange experiences, (c) employee responses to breaks in organizational practices and routines, and (d) potential changes that result from strange workplace events. At issue are more enduring questions surrounding organizational life that deal with organizational uncertainty, the sensemaking process, and the complex relation between the self and the other. Exploration of strangeness experiences is potentially valuable to organization studies precisely because they reflect employee understanding of organizational practices and may be signs of structural inconsistencies or conflicts (see Giddens, 1979, 1981), effectiveness or ineffectiveness of organizational policies, employee resistance to change, and organizational novelty and unpredictability.
Making Sense of Strangeness in Organizations
Shifts in organizational routines, whether officially sanctioned by an organization or simply an artifact of everyday interaction among workers, are indicators of change processes and as such call into question organizational practices, routines, and norms. Any interpretation of an experience as strange and/or unusual indicates a challenge to an existing personal, social, and/or organizational framework that is in some way important to the sensemaker. A strange experience, by definition, is a challenge to the sensemaker’s frame of reference and requires a reordering, reconstitution, or rejection of the particular frame (Weick, 1995). Strange or unusual experience demarcates a disjunction in the patterns and routines of the workplace and may reflect uncertainty and ambiguity in organizing. Likewise, workplace experiences may also involve non-work-related kinds of activities, the development of friendships, or intense personal conflicts.
Strange workplace experiences require some type of response, if not discursive or narrative then cognitive and/or behavioral. That is, the shock or break from the routine demands a response (theoretically at least) that is geared toward creating or maintaining coherence (White, 1981) and creates opportunity for story construction. The fact that a sensemaker construes or judges a situation to be strange and unusual indicates that predictions and anticipations of events have failed to fit into existing schemas or frameworks or that an external event has challenged ways of thinking or engaging organizational processes. A challenge to an organizational system is an opportunity to construct or overlay meaning about the unusual experiences. Jeong and Brower (2008) noted that much of the work in sensemaking is theoretical and abstract and thus offered a tripartite framework for organizing sensemaking experiences. The three elements correspond closely with Weick’s overarching framework for sensemaking, but Jeong and Brower identify noticing (Weick’s notion of extracted cues), interpretation, and action as foundational in how employees respond to strange organizational experiences.
Employee perceptions of strange experiences in the workplace are also important for understanding how self construes and makes sense of the other. Strangeness implies otherness. Gurevitch (1988) argued that indispensable to any dialogue is the appearance of the other. As such, every communication interaction and hence every story exposes an awareness of self and other in organizational relating. The dialogue created by and maintained between self and other is also an interplay of the familiar and the strange (Gurevitch, 1988). Hence, the “process of making strange exposes the presence that was veiled by a web of taken-for-granted meanings. This exposure of presence may well bring forth new understandings and recognition, but it might also involve anxiety and threat” (Gurevitch, 1988, p. 1186). Organizational employees may consider others both familiar and strange or perhaps at times familiar and at other times strange. The notion of strangeness is “reserved for someone or something that belongs (if at all) elsewhere” (Gurevitch, 1988, p. 1180). Making sense of the stranger and/or the strange has important implications for organizational identity (Bird, 2007; Weick, 2001) and how individuals (and groups) define who and what they are. Thus, studying strange experiences in organizations can shed light on individual and organizational identity and on processes or perceptions of stability and change in organizational life.
Research Questions
Brown (1986) asserted that stories are an important part of any organization’s discourse and that they function to reduce uncertainty, manage meaning, and aid in identification among organizational members. Research on storytelling in organizations has characterized stories as cultural performances (Boje, 1991; Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo, 1983), speech actions (Brown, 1985), and a type of human interaction (Fisher, 1984). In most instances, stories are associated with organizational processes that are enduring or that may reflect themes and experiences that generalize across a variety of organizational contexts and time periods (Boje, 2001; Martin et al., 1983). However, strange workplace experiences may actually represent challenges to organizational culture, existing frameworks or norms, or ways of seeing and doing organizational business. Although researchers often elaborate on the form or structure of the story as a sequence of events having a “beginning-middle-end,” the purpose of this study is to provide an interpretive-empirical analysis of strange workplace experiences, where four issues are elaborated.
The first is to identify the nature of the strange experience, that is, determine what specifically was considered odd, unusual, and/or unexpected. Weick (1995, 2012) noted that stories often arise in situations where something out of the ordinary or routine has occurred; strange experiences can be considered prototypical of breaks in organizational routines. Theoretically, a strange experience may include shifts in both formal and informal organizational rules, where the employee has no knowledge of change or does not anticipate how a change may affect regularized organizational practices. For example, an unexplained managerial change in organizational strategies might create uncertainty or chaos and result in confusion for employees. Similar to Jeong and Brower’s (2008) concern for noticing, the first research question addresses employee perceptions of the unusual.
Research Question 1: What types of workplace experiences do organizational members perceive as strange or unusual?
Not only do organizational members notice breaks in organizational routines and practices; they are faced with making choices about how to respond. An important element of the sensemaking process is how members enact the organizational environments they experience (Weick, 1995). The enactment process creates and is created by breaks in and punctuation of behaviors and leads to the question of what action employees take when confronted with nonroutine situations at work. Thus, the second research question is the following:
Research Question 2: In what ways do employees respond to strange workplace experiences?
Although identifying employee responses to strange workplace experience is important, Weick (1995) argued that sensemaking involves the drive or necessity of people to make what they interpret plausible. “Sensemaking is about accounts that are socially acceptable and credible” (Weick, 1995, p. 61); the sensemaker must account for the break in organizational routines, he or she must fit the experience within personal and organizational sensemaking structures. Therefore, the third research question is the following:
Research Question 3: What causes or attributions do employees make about strange workplace experiences?
Recognition of a strange experience may call into question the normalcy of organizational practice. Sometimes, the break from a routine practice or a challenge to existing norms can lead to changes in personal behavior, decision outcomes, or organizational policy. Theoretically, employees face a decision about how to manage the strange experience, which might include avoidance, a change in behavior, a challenge to the event, or any number of possible responses. Thus, the fourth research question is the following:
Research Question 4: What changes do employees report as a result of strange workplace experiences?
Method
Participants
Participants were 22 employees of a large national insurance company located in the Midwest, recruited as part of a graduate course in organizational communication. Participants ranged in age from 21 to 69, with a mean age of 40.67 years (SD = 14.60). The length of employment for participants ranged from 6 months to 19.8 years, with a mean length of employment of 4.83 (SD = 5.9). A total of 54 stories emerged from interview data with a mean of 2.45 stories per participant. Of the sample, 59% were women and 41% were men. The positions held by the 22 employees can be categorized into three areas: (a) 12 were analysts and sales personnel—support coordinators, coaches, sales representatives, and information analysts; (b) 9 were managers—human resources, computing services, customer service, product services, information resources, and office; and (c) 2 were administrative assistants. All participants had some kind of supervisory role or management role over other employees in the organization.
Interview Procedures
Five graduate students from an organizational communication course were trained using a semistructured interview protocol designed to explore “strange” and unusual workplace experiences. One graduate student contacted a manager in the human resources department of a large insurance company in the Midwest, who then created a list of organizational employees willing to participate in the study. Since interviews took place at the organization, the length of each interview was somewhat constrained by time limitations of the participants. All interviews were audio taped with the verbal and written consent of the interviewee. The interviewers completed approximately half of the transcriptions; the author and two research assistants completed the transcription of the remaining interviews.
At the outset of the interview, interviewers explained that the purpose of the study was to explore stories about workplace experiences that the interviewee thought were strange, unusual, and/or unexpected. Prior to each story, interviewers asked participants to “think about a story that you would like to tell about a strange or unusual experience in the workplace.” Although the interviewers were instructed to ask additional questions to probe specific interviewee responses, the following questions were always asked for each of the stories told. (a) In your own words, describe what happened. (b) What was strange or unusual about this event or experience? (c) What was your response to this situation? (d) What do you think was the cause of this particular event or experience? (e) Has anything changed as a result of this experience? Additional probes by interviewers were used for purposes of elaboration and did not involve other structured questions.
Story Analysis and Development of Categories
The story strangeness theme was the unit of analysis. For thematic analysis and development of categories, this study used a variation of the grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; for a similar approach see Brown, 1985). The development of themes was constructed using an inductive approach to each strangeness experience that resulted in a coding manual. The semistructured protocol and four themes were loosely determined by current literature on narrative in organizations, Weick’s (2001) sensemaking perspective, and Gurevitch’s (1988) construction of the dialogic relationship between strangeness and familiarity.
Results
Analysis of the story themes resulted in the construction of four separate category schemes, one each for story experience, response, attribution, and change. An independent coder and a research assistant double-coded 72% of the stories with an absolute agreement of 82.6% (Cohen’s Kappa = .74). The author settled any discrepancy between the code designations. The remaining 28% of themes were divided equally between the two coders. Following is an explication of each of the four category schemes and excerpts from stories of strange organizational experiences.
Story Themes
Inductive analysis of the 54 strangeness stories resulted in the construction of six themes. Most participants focused on what they regarded as odd and unusual workplace experiences rather than those experiences that were simply unexpected or unanticipated consequences of everyday work routines. The six themes that emerged from the data in order of frequency are (a) lack or lapse in professionalism, 38.8%; (b) uncertainty, 22.2%; (c) threat to the internal organizational environment, 12.9%; (d) embarrassment, 11.1%; (e) suddenness, 9.2%; and (f) inequity or fairness issues, 3.7%. Below is an elaboration of participant responses to each of the six themes.
Lack or Lapse in Professionalism
This theme was indicated in 21 of the 54 stories (38.8%). Respondents talked about individuals in the workplace who behaved in ways that were inconsistent with participant construals of workplace professionalism. Commonly, respondents noted that the behavior or action was something “that does not usually happen in the workplace.” For example, a 36-year-old customer service manager repeated a story she had been told about a workplace experience.
Supposedly, some woman who was having some personal problems and having some, um, difficulties with like … just psychologically, got on the receptionist’s phone and announced to everybody that the world was gonna end and things were going to be collapsing around us and to quick get out of the building.
A female human resources manager with 14 years of experience described a problem with employee adjustments to cooling and heating in the physical environment.
On the third floor we have a couple of ladies who have been with the company several years and some of them are always cold and some are always hot. … They made an adjustment [to cool during a hot spell in the fall] at one point a couple of weeks ago ’cause we were getting complaints that it was too hot. … One of the employees came in with a coat, and she had her coat on, her hood up and she had an umbrella up over her desk. The supervisor just about had a fit when she walked in and saw this woman sitting there with a coat and hood on and just thought it was kind of bizarre. And she said that the air was blowing too much on her neck and it was causing her to have back pain and all kinds of complications.
In both stories, respondents indicated that the behavior was not professional and reflected badly on the individuals. Company norms for behavior were clearly stressed and regarded as the standard against which member behavior should be judged.
Uncertainty
The second most commonly reported theme was uncertainty (12 of 54, 22.2%). Respondents reported that strange experiences occurred but that they happened without any closure, explanation, or justification. The respondents would identify uncertainty as the driving force behind the story. One male respondent talked about a rather large-scale employee response to the announcement of a stock split in the company.
An announcement came out which nobody was prepared for, that the stock split. And that was very strange to me because I didn’t know what that meant. Um, and it put people into a total panic, the reactions of the people in the class [training for teambuilding], were just at all different levels, from excitement to people crying, people in a panic thinking something was happening to the company.
This response demonstrates the confusion about the implications of a stock split, but clearly, the respondent focused on the resulting uncertainty and the variety of employee responses to the announcement.
Threat to the Internal Organizational Environment
The third most frequently discussed theme (7 of 54, 12.9%) had to do with threats to some aspect of the organization. In many cases, some “outsider” is described as having threatened the working environment. A female information resource manager told this story:
On this day there was a commotion, now in the parking lot, and as I looked out the window … there’s someone picketing. So I went outside and he was picketing, he was putting flyers on various cars and as he was doing this he was shouting at the top of his lungs about how [Company Name] was not doing what they were supposed to be doing, and I’m not quite sure what it was all about at the time. … But one thing that I knew was that I had to stop him; first of all he would be upsetting the group, which he was, secondly, he was shouting obscenities which you know, hey we don’t do that.
Other threats included such bizarre incidents as bomb threats and salespersons’ (outsiders’) failed attempts to gain access to people within the organization.
Embarrassment
Of the 54 themes, 6 (11.1%) focused on an embarrassing experience or event. One male respondent told this story in reference to changing buildings and not knowing key personnel in the new building.
We had taken over this building in February of ’98 … and at the time I did not know this person [on the elevator]. I know of, but never seen, never met. Uh, the company gives you a lot of perks here … pens, cups, mugs, what not. And my friend and I were in the elevator one day, and I had just gotten a mug that, it was a coffee mug with a nice big logo … and the person had asked me, “Where’d you get. … ” There was three people in the elevator. … The third person had asked us, uh, “Where’d you get the mug?” I said “I had gotten it from my manager for something that I did like outside of … like over and beyond.” He just gave it to me because he had a couple of extra. They’re, they’re really prizes. The more you do, the more crap you get [laughing]. And uh, I said, “Well it’s who ya know, and I know somebody.” … It turns out this person that was in the elevator was this building lead [a type of manager/coach] and she goes, “Oh really?”
Not only did this respondent get caught in a lie, but he was embarrassed because the building lead was someone he should have known, and the reward was something that was unearned. The conclusion to the story is that the friend abandoned the respondent and left the elevator earlier than necessary, leaving the respondent to face the building manager alone.
Suddenness
Of the 54 themes, 5 (9.2%) were considered strange or unusual because of how quickly or suddenly the event occurred. For example, one female respondent indicated that management often made quick decisions that left her is a state of uncertainty about work-related activities.
I think what surprises me most is how quickly we make a lot of decisions without really being involved in them. … I worked for this woman … and really liked working with her. I probably worked with her a couple of months and they changed her. They just moved her out of the position to something else, and there again I was left just learning that job and without anybody to help, so they did end up getting a manager that lasted probably 2 weeks and they got rid of him. So now I am the current manager … because they didn’t have another manager there. And I thought it was very strange that they got rid of him, especially after the first was moved.
Obviously, the amount, degree, or suddenness that accompanies change in organizations can be perceived as a significant source of disruption to the working environment.
Inequity/Fairness
Of the 54 themes, 2 (3.7%) dealt with experiences of respondents who perceived that they had been treated unfairly with regard to particular workplace incidents or that they witnessed incidents wherein inequities exist. A male respondent noted the following:
There are three companies as a whole here. And uh, the janitorial staff is broken down with [references to maintenance personnel] there’s like cross members. … They tend to intermix with each other and work hand in hand. And also the food company is completely separate so that anything a [Company Name] employee wants from the cafeteria they must pay for. … It’s not free food here. Yet there are a lot of people who … there’s a delivery company that works with us too, and members of the maintenance staff that I’ve seen, during the lunch hours when it’s busy here, will just walk through here, order something, and walk away without paying. … But I find it odd that these people think, “They work here, why not get free food.” And if that’s the way it is, why shouldn’t I get free food and the rest of the people?
Overall, respondents’ stories of strange workplace experiences reveal that problems with professional conduct or a “lapse” in professionalism are perhaps serious issues for management. Identifying story theme, however, reveals only what is regarded as strange and not how organizational members respond to various incidents, experiences, and stories.
Story Response Themes
Inductive analysis of the 54 stories resulted in the construction of 10 response themes. The themes that emerged from the data in order of frequency are (a) assistance giving, 20.3%; (b) adaptation/accommodation, 18.5%; (c) humor, 14.8%; (d) panic/stress, 12.9%; (e) surprise/shock, 11.1%; (f) inquiry/information seeking, 5.5%; (g) challenges to individual, supervisor, and/or management, 5.5%; (h) positive psychic change, 5.5%; (i) judgment/suspicion, 3.7%; and (j) negative psychic change, 1.8%.
Assistance Giving
Respondents reported in 11 of the 54 (20.3%) response themes that they provided assistance to another person or employee. For example, the female employee who reported the building temperature problem between two employees said,
What I advised the manager to do was to have the employee close the umbrella and if she wanted to keep her coat on she was welcome to do that, but what we did was call the building services and had them come out and try to adjust the air flow of the vent right above the work station so that she wouldn’t have all that air blowing on her.
Clearly, the intent of this respondent was to assist the worker by reacting to very specific needs rather than make wholesale changes to the building temperature. In another case, one respondent attempted to give assistance but was unsure of what action to take or if the action was appropriate. For example, a male respondent, in a crisis situation wherein a female in her 20s said she felt like she was having a stroke, told this story.
And as she was describing her symptoms, she started like ripping off her clothing. It just kind of freaked me out, you know. She like undid her top, and started undoing, you know, her bra. … She was like having an anxiety attack. [Responding to interviewer question that asked about response, participant said,] Um, the response was, you know, hurry up and close the area so people couldn’t see her and just kinda put a sweater over her so that people wouldn’t be able to see her personal side, you know, I was just kind of nervous. … I didn’t know if something’s really seriously happening, and she wouldn’t let me call 911.
Other stories of assistance-giving responses included giving aid to workers who were new or unsure about work tasks.
Adaptation/Accommodation
The second most frequently indicated response theme to strange experiences was to accommodate or adapt to new and unusual circumstances (10 of 54, 18.5%). Sometimes participants reported that they “stayed out of it” or disengaged from the incident. In one story, a male respondent, feeling singled out for inequitable work distribution in a work group, reported his response in this way.
Grin and bear it. I had to because, I mean, I really had no room to say, “Well I don’t want to do it.” I have the time to do it … it’s my job to … that’s what I have to do.
In response to a conflict over personal matters between two women in a work unit, the coworker responded by reporting,
I stayed out of it. I just sat there and listened while the two girls bickered back and forth. Um, they were swearing, they were arguing, they were yelling. … Some of the people had gotten written up for it.
Humor
Humor was indicated in 8 of the 54 (14.8%) response themes. Some of what happens in the workplace is comical. One male respondent, who described rolling on the floor with laughter, gave the following account.
Well my strange story is working with the division president who is very unusual. Often he would walk down the aisle ways, walk out of one shoe, not realize it, and keep going. He would have a shoe laying in the middle of an aisle. … He must not have liked shoes ’cause one other time we were waiting for him in a meeting room that looked onto the parking lot, and he forgot to put his shoes on in the wintertime and hopped out of his chauffeur-driven car and realized he was in the slush in his stocking feet and had to chase his car through the parking lot, hoping the driver would see him and give him his shoes.
Humorous stories were also very likely to be repeated to other employees. When asked who was told about the story above, the respondent said, “I told everyone!”
Stress/Panic
Of the 54 response themes, 7 (12.9%) were coded as stress and included language like, “I just panicked.” Often the nature of the story was more serious, as noted in the following description.
I had not worked for [Company Name] for very long, and we were asked to evacuate the building, that there was a bomb in the building. So it was like, okay, let’s leave, and it was like … I was panic stricken. Because I had no idea that the type of job that I had would involve bomb threats.
Other serious incidents included feeling stress caused by the death of a colleague and stress created by the requirement to fire large groups of workers because of downsizing.
Surprise/Shock
Of the 54 response themes, 6 (11.1%) were coded in the surprise/shock category. A male respondent reported a response of shock to management’s decision to hire a manager from the outside, contrary to company policy or preference to inside hiring.
At first I was shocked … for two reasons. One it was odd to have something go over like that. And the second reason I was shocked was because I would have expected them to, we’re real big on the consultative process here at [Company Name]. And when something is going to be changed what we want to do is let everyone know who is going to be impacted by that change so that they can give feedback on how they think it would work or not work.
In response to firing employees due to downsizing, one female manager said, “Well, first I was kind of shocked. Um, I was very sad; it was one of the hardest things I ever had to do as a manager.”
The four remaining response themes were indicated in fewer than four responses each in the following topics. First, inquiry/information seeking was indicated in three response reports. One such story was based on the split of company stock where the manager sought out information to quell the fears and anxieties of the employees. In another instance, an employee was caught making unauthorized phone calls (64 calls in 1 month to Las Vegas!) and the manager first sought information to determine whether in fact the calls were legitimate. Second, challenges to existing policies and violation of norms and procedures were indicated three times. For example, one male respondent challenged a process that he thought violated an existing company policy regarding disciplinary action.
I took my [Company Handbook] in there, and I questioned the whole thing. Why are we skipping these three steps? And they told me that I offended someone with language that I used, which I have no idea how, but they also couldn’t tell me what I said that offended anybody.
Third, positive psychic change, defined as a positive response that resulted in a change in attitude or outlook with regard to the incident in question, was indicated in 3 of 54 response themes. The final response category is judgment/suspicion, indicated in two cases, where individuals talked about critical evaluation of an action or behavior or were suspicious of a decision or policy.
All in all, a variety of responses to strange workplace experiences was reported. Providing assistance, adapting and accommodating, and using humor appear to be relatively healthy ways to adjust to uncertainty and unexpected workplace experiences. However, it is also valuable to determine the kinds of attributions respondents make for the existence of strange workplace experiences.
Story Attribution Themes
Inductive analysis of the 54 stories resulted in the construction of six story attribution themes and an other category. The six themes that emerged from the data in order of frequency are (a) personal problems, 33.3%; (b) poor communication, 16.6%; (c) organizational change (three subcategories of reorganization, promotions, and business routines), 16.6%; (d) management and supervisory practices, 9.2%; (e) uncertainty, 9.2%; (f) emergency/medical problems, 7.4% (and other—7.4%). Below is an elaboration of what the participants regarded as the reasons or causes of the strangeness events.
Personal Problems
The most common attribution was described as personal problems (18 of 54, 33.3%). Respondents would often remark about employees or outsiders who “freaked out,” “went crazy,” or “just lost it.” For example, the cause of the bomb threat story was explained this way. “Well from what I could gather, there are several people that become estranged if they lose their insurance or are told they are going to be cancelled for nonpayment.” The implication, of course, is that only crazy people would call in a bomb threat due to loss of insurance. Another female manager noted a “macho guy” having family problems and daydreaming at work was the reasons for his strange behavior.
Poor Communication
Poor communication was indicated in 9 of the 54 (16.6%) attribution response themes. Respondents typically talked about a lack of communication (and information underload), poor communication, and/or misunderstandings as the basis of unexpected workplace experiences. For example, in the earlier story of the man who was accused by management of using inappropriate language, miscommunication was cited as the causal factor for the problem. “Somebody that wasn’t involved in the conversation that heard part of it or what he wanted to hear out of it and ya know, jumped to conclusions or whatever and then got upset about it.” In the stock split story, the respondent assigned the cause of the problem to management, who did a poor job in communicating the implications of stock splits for company employees.
Organizational Change
The organizational change category was indicated in 9 of the 54 (16.6%) response themes. However, for this theme, three subcategories were derived based on the emergence of organizational change issues. First, in four separate stories, respondents indicated that reorganization was the cause of the problem or event. For example, one female manager who reported a sudden and unexpected change in job responsibilities assigned cause in this way.
They replaced one of the managers who was over the unit and decided to split up the groups between other managers. So what they did was take like half of the people and move them to one manager and the group to another manager. So, it was, I think, just part of the reorganization.
Promotions are the second subcategory designation in the organizational change category (3 of 54). Third, regular business routines were also indicated three times as the attributions for the story. For example, one female respondent noted that “slow business” was the cause in unexpected shifts in job responsibilities.
Management/Supervisory Practices
The management/supervisory practices category was indicated in 5 of 54 (9.2%) attribution themes. Respondents typically talked about poor supervision, a lack of supervision, or other management problems such as dislike of managers, poor decisions, and unfair treatment. For example, one male respondent, telling a story about the lack of appropriate food handling skills of a food worker, assigned responsibility this way: “I would say that there’s, uh, lack of supervision for the food crew here. I mean, I don’t think there’s a specific manager here.” In another incident, a female respondent, when discussing inappropriate yelling behavior of a fellow employee about a sister, home sick from work, said, “I think both sisters, they don’t really care for this supervisor. They don’t really like him as it is.”
The two remaining attribution themes are uncertainty and emergency/medical problems. In the uncertainty category (5 of 54, 9.2%) respondents indicated that they were unclear about what caused the strange workplace events. Emergency and medical problems were considered the cause of 4 incidents in the workplace. A final consideration in the telling of stories about strange workplace experiences is how the experience or event changed or did not change something regarding the person, co- workers, or the organization.
Story Change Themes
Inductive analysis of the 54 stories resulted in the construction of seven themes related to personal and organizational change. The seven themes in order of frequency are (a) no change or unknown, 38.8%; (b) increased sensitivity, 18.5%; (c) employee action, 14.8%; (d) improved communication, 9.2%; (e) improved problem-solving, 7.4%; (f) managed conflict more effectively, 5.5%; and (g) improved teamwork, 1.8% (and other, 3.7%). By and large these categories appear to indicate a positive response to strange workplace experiences. Most of the categories are indicative of changes that benefit employees and the organization in some tangible fashion.
Responses in the change or outcomes category were grouped into three subcategories based on similarity of responses: no change, improvement, and employee action. The first was the perception that no change occurred or that any possible changes were unknown to the respondent (21 of 54). Many participants indicated that no change was needed, that the strange experience reinforced the need to follow company policy, or that the incident was a one-time event that required no changes to work practices. In 9 cases, the strange experience was the result of organizational change that caused the event (see Story Attribution Themes section above) rather than a change as an effect or result of the strange experience.
A number of other organizational outcomes responses were collapsed into a second set of themes, improvement. Improvement outcomes were increased sensitivity toward others and the organization (10 of 54), communication (5 of 54), problem-solving (4 of 54), improved conflict management skills (3 of 54), and improved teamwork (1 of 54). In the case of the bomb threat mentioned earlier, the employee noted, “Well, it used to be that you could walk into any building, and there had been strange people that had walked in before; now we have key cards, we have security guards. … So yes, our security has changed.” The employee perceived that the change was positive for workers and the organization.
The third change theme represents employee action, wherein respondents recognized that the decisions and behaviors of employees resulted in some consequence or change in work habits or attitudes about other workers and/or the organization (8 of 54). For example, when performance was low, employees would be fired or demoted. During reorganization, improved performance, or other positive employee contributions, the employee action was a transfer, a promotion, or the assignment of other desirable or positive job responsibilities. Participants also discussed challenges managing subordinates. For example, when dealing with a personal crisis of a subordinate, one male manager noted that his approach had changed.
I think what I try to do is really push for them to get professional counseling, even earlier, as I hear things I think I’m more aware of it [employee personal problems]. … I really try to say, “You know what, get help before is causes trouble in your job,” and just be aware of that. And I counsel other managers the same.
In many cases, participants in this study focused on how the challenge or strange experience was solved or corrected within the structure of organizational rules and policies.
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to examine strange organizational experiences to better understand how employees make sense out of the unusual or unexpected. The four different themes, taken together, represent the unfolding of a narrative that examines specific episodes and experiences (what was strange event), employee responses (what did they do), accounts and reasons for the phenomenon (why the experience or event happened—explanatory power), and outcomes and consequences (possible personal and organizational changes). At a minimum, the interrelationship among these four schemes shed light on the episodic nature of meaning-making (Weick, 2012) in one organizational environment, a national insurance company.
But what is valuable about strangeness experiences from a sensemaking perspective? The perception that an experience or event is strange, unusual, and/or odd represents the prototypical cue by which employees take notice of something that is beyond the routine or the norm. Weick (1995) argued that the sensemaking process is rather swift, which makes it more likely that people will pay attention more to the product than to process. “To counteract this, we need to watch how people deal with prolonged puzzles that defy sensemaking, puzzles such as paradoxes, dilemmas, and inconceivable events” (p. 49).
An important aspect of the sensemaking process is the assignment of meaning to the uncertain, strange, and unfamiliar. This process of constructing order out of disorder is continuous and tenuous and relies heavily on the individual meaning-makers frameworks for sensemaking. In these data, it is obvious by the reported response themes that employees recognize the need to seek information to help construct a sensible explanation for the unknown. Likewise, a sense of interdependence among employees results in attitudes that promote the giving of assistance that may be both personal and work related.
Organizations are also “sites” where employees must cope with a variety of personal issues that can and do affect work performance. It is not as though work experience is a smooth and uninterrupted process where workers demonstrate equal degrees of competence and commitment. The attributions that the participants in this study made about causes for problems contained a high percentage of personal problem themes. However, coupled with positive assistance responses, adaptation and accommodation behaviors, and use of humor, it appears as though employees understand the personal needs of fellow employees and behave in ways that nurture and support their coworkers’ challenges. Worker responses to the extracted cues from organizational environments also leave open the possibility for effecting change by challenging existing policies or procedures, seeking additional information to reduce uncertainty, and changing individual outlooks and perspectives.
In some ways, these stories demonstrate how employees work to protect the self from the strange other or the strange organization as well as attempt to connect and support the organizational other. Gurevitch (1988) argued that the possibility of communication and understanding is made possible by seeing the other as different and, in important ways, a stranger to the self. Gurevitch opposes what he calls thinking-as-usual that stresses the familiar rather than the strange. “The stress of familiarity … forces one’s attention not only to what is already known and figured out but also to the act of deliberate ‘assuming away’ of the unfamiliar as part of everyday life” (p. 1180).
In telling their stories of strange workplace experiences, employees of this insurance company identified the other in implicit and explicit ways. For example, a number of stories identified the outsider as the other, especially those cases where the attributions of the other result in labels such as crazy or psychologically maladjusted. In these instances, the other serves to reinforce organizational rules and policies and support identity claims of the employee as stable and psychologically healthy. That is, if others are crazy and strange, the storyteller reaffirms her or his competence and legitimacy in the workplace. The other solidifies the construction of boundaries that serve to protect the organization and its members. For example, protestors or salespersons are constructed as the outsider, the intruder, and threaten the values or practices of the organization. Thus, an identity of company advocate can be reinforced when an employee deals appropriately with threats from outsiders—in these cases, having a salesperson removed from the premises and reducing the threat of protestors.
Othering can also occur when management and supervisors are acting on behalf of the organization. The perception that management actions, or lack of actions, cause problems in the organization may create an “us” versus “them” mentality, and/or can result in employee attempts to make management more understandable, their actions more sensible. The fact that organizational members are reporting such positive changes with regard to stories about strange workplace experiences may be one indicator that employees are willing to change and learn about the dynamic organizational environment.
Implications for Future Research
Future research in organizational sensemaking is valuable for continued understanding of organizational member interpretations of everyday work and organizational uncertainty and change. In particular, this research suggests a number of directions for continued empirical investigation of sensemaking and storytelling in organizations. First, in this sample, organizational members described numerous situations where the personal life of employees interfered with work. Kirby, Wieland, and McBride (2013) argued that work/life conflicts are significant events in organizational member experiences and create significant stressors for employees. Although participants in this sample did not explicitly discuss work/life tensions or conflict, clearly there were implicit indications that employee life events affected work quality and commitment. An obvious next step in future studies would be to explore the intersection of sensemaking and storytelling about work/life conflict.
Second, this study examined the responses and possible organizational changes that are linked to interpretations of unusual, nonroutine workplace events. This process highlights the potential value of action in organization studies (Colville et al., 2012). Future research could conceivably bring multiple organizational stakeholders together in focus groups to explore the links between sensemaking and interpretation of organizational vision, strategies, and action-oriented organizational practices. In complex, modern organizations, issues of sensemaking, action, and alignment are important for management communication theory and practice. For example, questions that focus on the value of organizational sensemaking might include the following: “To what extent does management seek information about the interpretive processes of employees at all levels in the organization?” “To what extent are organizational stories coherent and shared among organizational members?” “How might stories of unusual experiences indicate problems with transitions, miscommunication, or other organizational deficits?”
Third, future research should also link issues of sensemaking and storytelling to organizational change efforts (see Boje, Burnes, & Hassard, 2012). Using both narrative and antenarrative (Boje, 2001), research can explore the fluid and often chaotic nature of organizational member stories over periods of significant organizational change. Boje (2001) provides an alternative narrative analysis methodology (antenarrative); when combined with stories of organizational members at all organizational levels and including multiple stakeholders (Boje et al., 2012), it might shed light on the dialogic and polyvocal nature of stories about change. Case study analysis might be the most manageable starting point for this type of research program.
Finally, future research might explore the intersection of multiple theoretical frames for understanding organizational member interpretive processes. Weick’s (1995, 2012) sensemaking perspective is, in part, based on the idea that individuals extract cues from organizational environments, and those cues have implications for both cognitive and behavioral outcomes. For example, the nonroutine organizational events or unpredictable strange experiences resonate in some ways with Burgoon’s (1978) Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT) and Kelly’s (1955, 1966/1970) Personal Construct Theory (PCT). In PCT, Kelly argued that individuals’ psychological processes are determined by the nature of their anticipation of events. Thus, an unanticipated events triggers attention, or noticing, and requires the sensemaker either to reject the unanticipated event or somehow to incorporate the new event into an existing frame, a reordering of the personal construction of reality. In EVT, Burgoon and colleagues (see Burgoon & Hale, 1988; Le Poire & Burgoon, 1994) argued that violating expectations has positive and negative outcomes, highlights the nature of punishment and reward in human anticipation processes, and includes potentially strong emotional responsiveness. Neither Kelly’s PCT or Burgoon’s EVT has been linked to sensemaking in organizational environments; however, all three theories are commentaries on the human response to unexpected or unanticipated events.
Limitations and Conclusions
Particular limitations of the present study should be borne in mind when considering the results. First, interviews were conducted with only 22 organizational members, and generalizable conclusions about strange workplace experiences for this or other organizations are not possible. However, gaining access to this organization was difficult and not without controversy. For example, after data were collected, the organization wanted access to all interview data and asked that none of the information provided be used. Upon further inquiry, not all decision makers in human resources were aware of the research or convinced that the data would not be used to harm or attack the reputation of the organization. After repeated follow-up phone calls the author was given permission to move forward with the research. In tightly guarded organizations, access to stories about strange experiences, from management’s point of view, can uncover problems and uncertainties that demonstrate managerial and organizational weaknesses.
Second, given the tightly controlled nature of the workplace, interviewers were given access to employees only during lunch hour and for a short duration. If repeated interviews or open access to employees had been granted, exploring some root causes of organizational change processes might have been possible. As is, the data provide a glimpse into how employees make sense of strangeness experiences.
Strange experiences in organizations can serve to challenge, stretch, transform, and clarify organizational roles, behaviors, and sensemaking frameworks. As a conversational unit, stories can serve to bring the past to the present and re-create past experience to shed light on the present. This research identified four interrelated frameworks that represent a loose beginning-middle-end story sequence. Although the data provide a rich background from which to understand strange and unusual workplace experiences, the process of sensemaking is an ever-changing tapestry of ideas, images, experiences, and interdependencies among people from a variety of backgrounds. This study was designed to explore stories of strange events that shed light on how people manage the incredible complexities of the modern organization.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.