Title: Strategic sense-giving at the micro-level: facilitating and triggering coordinated action

Authors: Timo Vuori

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Aalto University, P.O. Box 15500, 00076 Aalto, Finland

Abstract: Collective, coordinated action allows a group to achieve results that are beyond the sum of individual efforts. How do executives help people to take coordinated actions? How do they influence the sense-making of the people to ensure that the group is able to act as a collective? To answer these questions, I carried out an in-depth study of a CIO|s sense-giving tactics and identified how his sense-giving facilitates and triggers collective, coordinated action. Accordingly, this sense-giver creates both shared understanding and shared faith through specific micro-tactics, to increase |collective action potential|, which he then transforms to action by using specific triggering tactics. I abstract the sense-giving tactics used by the CIO and explain their theoretical mechanisms. Thus, I extend research on sense-giving and coordinated action.

Keywords: sense-giving; sense-making; coordination; strategy implementation; collective action; coordinated action.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMD.2011.039951

International Journal of Management Development, 2011 Vol.1 No.1, pp.1 - 14

Published online: 28 Nov 2014 *