1. Meaning Work: Making Meaning in Low Structure Situations
Sue Ashford
Ruth Blatt
Sue

2. Our Questions to You
Where does what we’re saying seem interesting or new?
What conversation does this contribute to?
Where could we be more clear?
Relevant literatures we need to take into account?
Sue

3. The Meaning of Work – A Confusion
Work as a life domain – what does it mean to a person? Ruiz-Quintanilla & England, Wrzesniewski
Work as an activity – what is its content how is it evaluated? Wrzesniewski, Dutton & Debebe
When does work have meaning? Pratt & Ashforth
Derived from the fit of what I’m doing and who I am
Derived from fit of where I’m belonging and who I am
Us: How do people create and use meaning in work in service of outcomes?
Sue

4. Meaning and Work
Organizations help sustain contribution from their members by granting meaning
Division of labor & role definition set the premises for decision-making – what do I do? (March & Simon; Katz & Kahn)
Symbolic actions by leaders define a sense of purpose – why am I doing it? (Barnard)
Culture, history, rituals, symbols define what is appropriate – how should I do it? (O’Reilly & Chatman)
Organizational membership increases positive identity at work – who am I? (Pratt & Ashforth; Dutton et al., Tyler)
Collective sensemaking about the work in reduces ambiguity and uncertainty – what do events mean? (Weick, Maitlis)
Ruth

5. But what if meaning is not granted?
No role to follow
No leaders to grant meaning
No organization to feel a part of
No norms to adhere to
No colleagues with whom to make sense
Ruth
THERE IS A CONTRADICTION HERE – on one hand, a meaning void. No meaning given. An absence of meaning that requires meaning-making in order to compensate.
On the other hand, all action in this situation is imbued with meaning by nature of the extreme choice and therefore everything you do reflects your choice (and therefore your preferences, personality, judgment), attributions are internal.
This means that your task is to translate the meaning of your actions to a broader framework that ties together who you are and what you do.
Context of high mindfulness and consciousness about how you do things. Leads to rich self-knowledge data based on self-analysis
This context is also one in which you need to justify your actions and their consequences both to yourself and often to others.
The ambiguity and lack of structure often raises the most
basic of existential questions – do I matter? - and a host of
more specific meaning questions as the work is engaged.

6. Our Study 41 individuals performing work outside of organizations
90-minute interviews about their day-today lives
We hope to draw implications for other low-structure situations, such as entrepreneurship, virtual work, design work and research work.
Sue

7. Sample N = 41 What do they do: Artist 8 Writer 7 Graphic Designer 6
Consultant 9
Hi Tech 6
Other 5
Sue
Other includes mediator and nonprofit entrepreneur

8. Sample What is their life situation? Years of experience
Married/Partner 70%
Kids? 40%
Male/Female 51/49%
Years of experience
14+ 29%
3-8 39%
<3 32%
Sue

9. Sample Financial Success Dependence on Income In this by choice?
High – 35% Med – 41% Low – 24%
Dependence on Income
High – 49% Med – 29% Low – 22%
In this by choice?
90% had high degree of choice
Sue

10. For a NS worker, you need to make meaning yourself
However, you have lots of data to use in meaning making because in NS work, your actions are self-implicating
Your choices tell you about you
Your reactions and emotions are important information about your functioning
These realities push you to self examination – to clarify what matters most
And can engage pressures to preserve a positive self-concept (which may need to be guarded against at times)
Sue

11. You need to figure out: Who am I? What do I do?
How can I do it in a way that is right for me?
Why am I doing it?
What do various events mean?
Ruth
Quote 3 relevant here

12. (an plausible story of the self at work) Vocabularies of Action
Meaning Narrative
(an plausible story of the self at work)
Make sense with
Revise
Make sense with
Revise
Realm of Ongoing Action
Interrupt
Interrupt
Make sense with
Institutional
society
occupations
organizations
Economics
Make sense with
Pay attention to
Pay attention to
Ruth
The idea is that there is an ongoing narrative (the top line) that is used to make sense and gets revised as a result of making sense.
Occasions for sensemaking are interrupts
In addition to the narrative, sensemaking of the interrupts occurs through vocabularies of action, both institutional vocabularies and self-knowing vocabularies.
The more institutional vocabularies you pay attention to, the better the ability to make sense of interrupts and sustain action.
The richer the self-knowing, the better the ability to make sense of interrupts and sustain action.
The more coherent and elaborate the meaning narrative, the better the ability to make sense of interrupts and sustain action.
These are the meaning resources.
Vocabularies of Action
Make sense with
Make sense with
Self-knowing
values
choices
self-concept
Create & elaborate
Create & elaborate
time

13. Narratives
Meaning narratives are plausible stories about the self at work that answer the questions: who am I? and why am I doing what I am doing?
Clear narratives provide:
A sense of stability in the face of flux
Direction in the moment and for the long-term
A framework for making sense of actions already taken
Motivation
Resilience
Help in sustaining a positive self-concept
An aesthetic
Ruth
Narratives are stories in which people are protagonists.
They are inherently linked with their identity and who they are.
Focus on coherence and plausibility as well as intention
Serve to interpret the past and guide the future (because they embody a sense of right and wrong) So add the notion of past, present, and future
Draw upon that rich knowledge that the self-implicating nature of the situation generates. Auto-psychology
Functions of a clear narrative
A sense of stability in the face of flux
Direction in the moment and for the long-term – quotes 6 and 7
Makes sense of actions already taken. Insight and reflection
Motivational – inspires and energizes
Resilience – buffers from market at feedback.
Aesthetic – a good story for its own sake
Eg – of a good story is the ruglady. Found herself divorced and having to support 2 kids but also wanted to be with them and express her artistic talents. Long tale about how she accidentally ran into a friend who helped her get the idea to do area rugs and encouraged her to make them. Started slowly and now she’s putting those kids through college with the rug money. The story makes clear who she is and what she does, has a strong theme of self-determination and living out her vision of motherhood and creativity, is aesthetic and has been retold many time in magazine articles. It is motivational because of the supporting the kids but also because she was helped by someone’s kindness. And it provides a lot of resilience in the face of criticisms from self and others that she is in fact just sewing together scrap pieces of rugs in her dusty basement.

14. Invocation and creation of meanings in the everyday
Meaning Functions. The created meanings help these workers to:
Energize action
Direct action
Cope with interrupts
Modify the narrative
In everyday life, people in ambiguous situations use a wide variety of resources to create meaning in service of sustaining action:
Their narratives
Their experiences
Their reactions to their experiences
Words pulled from various “vocabularies of action” to make sense of experience
Sue

15. Vocabularies of Action
Institutional vocabularies
Society (ideologies)
Occupations (predecessors, norms)
Organizations (rules, roles, and structures)
Economics (profit, self-interest)
Self-knowing vocabularies
Values
Choices
Self-concept
Ruth
These vocabularies are used as resources.
Ideologies include the free agent rhetoric, spiritual and religious vocabularies, psycho-analytic vocabularies
Occupational is how artists, writers, consultants, etc do and think about things Quote 11
Organizational have to do with bureaucracy – roles, rules, division of structures into time and place
Markets have to do with sustaining an economic enterprise – profit, self interest, entrepreneurship and taking advantage of opportunity
Self-knowing vocabularies are the result of extensive self-analysis and entail honoring the data on oneself. Own values, those are elaborated upon, called upon, and sometimes revised. Choice – this is the result of observing one’s actions, knowing who one is based on what one does. Especially relevant because of the self-implicating nature of their situation. And self-concept, this is about preserving and protecting a positive view of the self, both to the self and to others. Ego. It’s one’s concept of what makes me unique.
Note lack of group membership, except to the extent that they draw upon societal and occupational groups. It’s not the membership that matters but the ability to use and appropriate their vocabularies.

16. Everyday Meaning Making is Created by and Creates the Narrative
Ruth

17. (an plausible story of the self at work) Vocabularies of Action
Meaning Narrative
(an plausible story of the self at work)
Make meaning with
Revise
Make meaning with
Revise
Realm of Ongoing Action
Interrupt
Interrupt
Make sense with
Institutional
society
occupations
organizations
Economics
Make sense with
Pay attention to
Pay attention to
Ruth
The idea is that there is an ongoing narrative (the top line) that is used to make meaning and gets revised as a result of making sense.
Occasions for sensemaking are interrupts.
The upper half of the figure is meaning making. The bottom half is sensemaking.
Sensemaking of the interrupts occurs through vocabularies of action, both institutional vocabularies and self-knowing vocabularies.
The more institutional vocabularies you pay attention to, the better the ability to make sense of interrupts and sustain action.
The richer the self-knowing, the better the ability to make sense of interrupts and sustain action.
The more coherent and elaborate the meaning narrative, the better the ability to make sense of interrupts and sustain action.
These are the meaning resources.
The realm of action – dealing with the interrupts through sensemaking and meaning-making motivates and directs action.
Weick talks about sensemaking being triggered by surprising or confusing events. We identify interrupts as occasions for sensemaking in this context, to be elaborated upon in a minute.
On difference between sensemaking and meaning making: link to higher narrative is meaning making. Also the language they use is of higher order constructs, not just content of work but putting it in broader framework.
Sensemaking is input into the meaning making. The narrative is meaning making.
Vocabularies of Action
Make sense with
Make sense with
Self-knowing
values
choices
self-concept
Create & elaborate
Create & elaborate
time

18. Interrupts
Occasions for meaning-making that happen when something disrupts the narrative as a device for making sense of work and the self-at-work.
Sue
Interrupts happen when constraints present challenges to one’s narrative. This is upsetting and motivates meaning-making. Eg contradiction faced by many artists between artistic freedom and the need to sell. Make meaning by drawing upon vocabularies. Eg free agent vocabularies (this is better than an organization), self honoring (at least I’m not writing crap), analyzing your childhood (my father didn’t spend time with me so I will attend to this interruption by my child), economic vocabularies (this is part of making a living at this), etc. Also use one’s own narrative to remember the broader picture of why we are doing this.
On the types of interrupts.
Not getting recognized is either financially or status-wise
Not meeting the goals I’ve set for myself includes when the goal is financial or when the goal is impact

19. Types of interrupts Actions Actions Self View Other’s View
Not taken
Taken
Not taken
Taken
No interrupt
Diversion
challenge
Self-expression challenge
Ego challenge
Expectations challenge
Authenticity challenge
Performance challenge
No interrupt
Doesn’t feel valuable
Doesn’t feel valuable
Self
View
Sue
Need to highlight that this is dynamic and in the moment.
Many of our quotes are about the interrupts.
Can link to Higgins discrepancies. The idea that standpoints matter is from him, we add the actions taken or not taken issue.
Feels valuable
Feels valuable
Others appear to value
Others do not appear to value
Other’s View

20. When is meaning-making negative?
No coherent narrative
Meaning-making becomes a diversion (e.g., nonprofit entrepreneur)
Lack of resourcefulness in drawing from vocabularies of action
Limited sensemaking constrains possible action (e.g., independent film producer)
Ruth
Quotes 13 and 14

21. Propositions
Sustaining effective action in a low-structure situation is aided by the development of a meaning narrative of the self that is plausible to the actor and answers: who am I? and Why am I doing what I’m doing?
Meaning narratives help actors cope with and respond to interrupts in the ongoing flow of action
Interrupts stem from discrepancies between actors’ own view of actions taken or not taken and evidence they have of others’ views of these actions.
Sustaining effective action is our relevant DV – tough to do in this situation, decoupled from satisfaction. It’s like performance, but not as defined by others, not quality and quantity, but rather effectiveness in terms of bringing them closer to their goals.
Regarding the first proposition about a narrative, this narrative, we argue, essentially is a substitute for those things that organizations give that we listed at the beginning – roles, leaders, culture, and organizational identity.
Here maybe we can mention that the vocabularies are like resources. Can give the mathematical modeler example.

22. Propositions, cont.
Meaning-making in low structure situations is aided by a competence at observing, analyzing, and honoring the self in action.
Meaning narratives are revised through time by drawing upon meaning vocabularies in response to interrupts
The broader the meaning vocabularies created and used, the better the ability to sustain action
Expanding attention to external vocabularies
Making usable a preoccupation with the self