Struggling to make sense of it all: The emotional process of sensemaking following an extreme incident
研究应急管理人员在重大山火后如何通过不同应对方式继续理解事件、参与公开调查并实施建议，揭示情绪（尤其是焦虑）对意义建构的促进或抑制作用。
Organizations operating in extreme contexts regularly face dangerous incidents they can neither prevent nor easily control. In such circumstances, successful sensemaking can mean the difference between life and death. But what happens afterwards? Our study of emergency management practitioners following a major bushfire reveals a process of post-incident sensemaking during which practitioners continue to make sense of the incident after it ends, during the subsequent public inquiry, and as they try to implement the inquiry’s recommendations. Different varieties of sensemaking arise during this process as practitioners rely on different forms of coping to develop and share new understandings, which not only make sense of the original incident, but also enable changes to help the organization deal with future incidents. Our study also shows that practitioners experience a range of emotions during this process, some of which inhibit sensemaking while others – particularly different forms of anxiety – can facilitate it. Our study makes an important empirical contribution to recent theoretical work on varieties of sensemaking and provides new insights into the complex role of emotions in sensemaking in extreme contexts.