Space and Sensemaking in High-Reliability Task Contexts: Insights from a maritime mass rescue exercise
通过分析海上救援演习的微观视频数据，研究了高认知负荷下行动者如何偶然地利用空间、未能重新调整空间环境，并发展出嵌套意义建构模型，对高可靠性组织绩效提升有启示。
The spatial environment shapes sensemaking in complex situations. While we know that actors in high-reliability task contexts often have a certain degree of control over their spatial environment, it remains unclear how they enact it and which effect this has on their sensemaking. In this paper, we use micro-ethnographic video data from two maritime mass rescue exercises to fill this gap. We find that actors that are under a high cognitive load enact space incidentally and fail to re-enact their spatial environment when problems arise. Instead, actors engage in micro-activities that temporarily mitigate the problems created by their space enactment. We develop a model on space and sensemaking in high-reliability task contexts that distinguishes between unenacted, enacted and lived space. Our findings point towards nested sensemaking, where the enacted spatial environment becomes part of the overall ‘story’ of an operation. Our findings have implications for our understanding of space and sensemaking in high-reliability task contexts, provide opportunities to improve high-reliability organizations’ performance and add to research on space and organising.