Managers' Innovations as ‘Sense‐making’
基于IT公司管理者的访谈数据，将创新解释为社会建构过程，强调权力关系如何影响创新者通过意义建构应对干扰事件、塑造身份，并最终在组织情境中实现创新。
Interpretations related to the social construction of innovation, derived from data provided by managers in an IT company, are placed within a conceptual framework of ‘sense‐making’, modified to take account of power relationships. The discussion in the body of the paper, illustrated and structured by reference to three case studies, deals with how innovators rely on experience in securing and shaping their identities in the face of disruptive events and how, from these origins, innovations are socially enacted within the organizational context, infused by power relations. In the concluding section it is proposed that the novelty of ‘an innovation’, and the degree of individual and social creativity required to achieve it, depend on the difficulty of making sense of disruptive events within the constraints of social relationships in their organizational context. It seems sensible, therefore, that a research agenda concerned with enhancing understanding of innovation processes should focus on the social construction of innovations, driven by the need individuals experience to make sense of disturbing stimuli in ways which protect and, preferably, enhance self‐identity.