Diagnosing the need for change - Cornelissen et al., The contraction of meaning: the combined effect of communication, emotions and materiality on sense making

5 important questions on Diagnosing the need for change - Cornelissen et al., The contraction of meaning: the combined effect of communication, emotions and materiality on sense making

Cornelissen et al., (2014) did research on commitment to a frame under high pressure. Sensemaking and sense giving were important aspects. What's the difference?

Sense making; how framing of decisions in an event sequence guides individual and collective inferences and behavior. 

Sense giving; influence sense making and meaning constructions of the other.

Cornelissen et al. (2014) argue the commitment to a frame is determined by communicative grounding, emotional contagion and material anchoring. Explain communicative grounding.

The authors found out that the path nature influences commitment. The communicative grounding, emotional contagion and material anchoring worked in a reinforcing way.


Communicative grounding; this is about the interaction between persons. It's about the language used. This overall communicative grounding process involves three subprocesses:
- Linguistic framing; the dialogue in which sense making and sense giving start.
- Grounding; communication connects with past instances of sense giving and sense making
- Job orientation; the collective nature of the process. Here, the frame starts to build up.

Thus, the cognitive frame is settle as part of the ongoing communication.

Cornelissen et al (2014) argue commitment to a frame is determined by communicative grounding, emotional contagion and material anchoring. Explain emotional contagion.


The emotional contagion is about the spread and strengthening of same emotions over time. The collective comes to share the same emotional state; ripple effect: emotions transferred across actors come to consume the entire collective. Three steps:
- Emotional erousal; positive or negative emotions.
- Contagion; energy level.
- Emotional state; parallel to the communicative grounding, the repetition and reinforcement of similar emotions leads to spreading and strengthening of emotions into a shared emotional state.
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Cornelissen et al (2014) argue commitment to a frame is determined by communicative grounding, emotional contagion and material anchoring. Explain the latter.

Material anchoring includes how material sings, gesture and objects influence sense making. This is about what can be touched and what is objective. This underscores the role that materiality plays in the thoughts and emotions. E.g. Finding a sport pass.

What is commitment as argued by Cornelissen et al (2014)

Commitment are the strong and collectively shared beliefs. Commitment to a certain frame builds up and may come to overrule reflective thought.

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