意义建构理论作为指导企业各层级间达成共识、协调行动的方法论备受学界关注.然而学界对意义建构理论的探索尚处于起步阶段,缺乏系统性回顾和逻辑梳理基础上的理论整合.本文对 Web of Science数据库中意义建构理论相关文献做了整理,给出以下三方面的归纳总结:(1)通过梳理意义建构理论提出背景及内涵,发现现有研究呈现"个体—组织"跨越及"认知主义—建构主义—整合主义"演进的特征;(2)通过归纳和总结意义建构行为的影响因素及过程,厘清由"单向—双向"推进的组织意义给赋互动逻辑,同时探讨意义建构理论在中国企业管理实践中的应用与拓展,构建更为完善的意义建构理论框架;(3)结合中国企业创新管理实践需要,从应用层面阐述未来研究展望,旨在推动意义建构理论在理论与实践中的进一步完善.
Connotation,Knowledge Framework and Future Pros-pect of the Sense Making Theory
In the context of the rapid change of global technology,enterprises are facing an increasingly volatile living environment and need to adjust corporate strategies frequently to adapt to chang-es in the external environment.However,there is often a cognitive disconnect between corporate leadership and other members,and it is difficult for enterprises to form a joint force to resist environmen-tal risks.In the implementation of the strategy,how to promote the members of the organization to form a consensus in the aspects of values,corporate culture and job responsibilities,achieve the ideo-logical level of"harmony",and then trigger the goal of the same or-ganizational action,to achieve the action level of"mutual help",has become a strategic issue in the unstable environment to improve the adaptability of enterprises and expand competitive advantage.How-ever,it is not easy for enterprises to timely perceive environmental changes and reach organizational consensus.The complexity of actors in modern enterprises and the variability of the environment increase the difficulty of consensus formation and action coordina-tion.In the face of the above problems,scholars focus on the advan-tages of organizational meaning building behavior in coping with diverse external situations,opportunity identification and cross-lev-el communication within organizations,dig into the relevant knowl-edge of meaning building theory,and discuss its important role in helping enterprises achieve"unity".Therefore,the theory of mean-ing construction has attracted much attention as a methodology to guide enterprises to reach consensus and coordinate actions among different levels.Originally derived from psychology,meaning build-ing theory was introduced into the field of management by Weick in the 1970s to explain the efficient coordination process of task force members in public crisis events.Later,its application scope was ex-tended to non-special situations of organizations in 1991.However,the research on meaning building theory only analyzes the forma-tion process of individual cognition of organization members from a single perspective.The neglect of the meaning transfer between organizational levels leads to the inability of theoretical research to guide organizational meaning construction in practice.In order to solve the above problems,the academic circle discusses the internal and external factors that affect the organizational meaning con-struction behavior based on the enterprise practice,and divides the meaning construction theory into individual meaning construction and organizational meaning construction to discuss the connotation and process of meaning generation and meaning giving respective-ly,which promotes the significance construction theory to make great progress in both theory and practice.However,the existing researches on the meaning building theory are not clear about the basic knowledge and knowledge structure of the theory,and lack a systematic review of the research on the proposal and development of the meaning building theory,how organizational meaning is gen-erated and transmitted,and the influencing factors of the meaning building behavior,which hinders the subsequent summary of the core issues of meaning building and the refining of the application of the theory.It is difficult to form the paradigm of enterprise man-agement research at the theoretical level.In view of this,this paper uses the core database of Web of Science(including SCI and SSCI)as the literature retrieval database,with the theme of"Sense-mak-ing"and"Sense-giving"for retrieval,and the document type is"Ar-ticle".The search period was from January 1996 to December 2022,and a total of 174 articles were retrieved.After the initial sample is obtained,in order to ensure that the final sample is closely related to the content of the meaning construction theory of management,the author reads the title,abstract and specific content of some articles one by one,and deletes the articles focusing on information tech-nology and psychological construction that do not meet the require-ments of the main body.At the same time,the conference papers,online publication and editorial materials are excluded.This paper finally collected 62 literatures from January 1996 to December 2022 as bibliometric samples,took these literatures related to mean-ing construction theory as research objects,systematically analyzed the specific applications and internal rules of meaning construction theory at home and abroad,and tried to answer the following ques-tions:(1)How to put forward the meaning construction theory?(2)What is the connotation of meaning building theory?What is the difference between individual meaning construction and organiza-tional meaning construction?(3)What are the influencing factors of meaning building behavior?From what aspects influence the meaning construction behavior?(4)What is the behavioral process of individual and organizational meaning construction?(5)How to continue in-depth research in the future?On the basis of the existing research,this paper discusses and deepens the following aspects:First,trace the background of the meaning construction theory,and summarize the theoretical connotation from the level of"individual"and"organization";The second is to analyze the meaning-building behavior process of individuals and organizations,and sort out the individual meaning-building behavior process caused by resource and environment change in existing studies and the organizational meaning-building behavior process caused by individual meaning construction,laying a foundation for subsequent scholars to deepen the research on meaning-building theory from different perspec-tives.Third,it constructs the knowledge framework of the theory of meaning construction,which focuses on the whole process of or-ganizational meaning construction,and combs the aspects of influ-encing factors,different levels of organization,interaction between different subjects,application and expansion.Fourthly,based on the shortcomings of the existing research on the meaning building theory,the author looks forward to the future research,and strives to provide ideas for the follow-up research and promote the further improvement of the meaning building theory in the theoretical and practical levels.
Sense-makingSense-givingMeaning GenerationLogic of ActionLiterature Review
万方数据
维普
