Exploratory Research On The Concept And Measure Of Sensemaking Leadership As Well As Its Impact On Work Engagement

Sensemaking is the process by which people define events and make sense of situations based on social interaction.Bracketing cues,interpretation and action are the core aspects of sensemaking.In the process of sensemaking,people give meaning to things,act on those meanings,and revise their interpretations of meaning based on their actions.In organizational context,sensemaking is essential for leadership development.Leaders in organizations can gain followership by influencing employees’ sensemaking processes,thereby enabling leadership effectiveness.As one of the basic responsibilities of leaders,guiding the process of sensemaking lay a foundation for problem solving.This is especially true in tourism enterprises where leading the process of sensemaking is an important and complex task.Generally,an effective sensemaking leadership process means a lot for the organization.Specifically,it is an effective strategy for tourism enterprises to cope with the diversity of employees’ cultural backgrounds and values.It is an important means to motivate and lead employees for the sake of promoting employees’ commitment and ensuring quality services quality.Moreover,it is also an important prerequisite to cope with the high intensity of emotional labor and to avoid abusive leadership behavior in tourism enterprises.With the increase of environmental uncertainty,organizational sensemaking has to cope with more and more novelty,surprise,and ambiguity.As such,sensemaking leadership is more and more challenging.In the literature,discussions of the sensemaking leadership process are,however,fragment,incomplete,or inclusive.They are scattered among discussions of other concepts and theories.In turn,this limitation results in the neglect of many core elements of sensemaking leadership.For example,the specific concept of sensemaking leadership has not been developed thus far.The lack of conceptualization hampers the development of measurement scale of sensemaking leadership,which severely limits the diversity of research paradigms and methodologies in this area,such as the inadequacy of findings regarding the breadth and depth of research on sensemaking leadership.There is also a lack of exploring on the mechanisms and boundary conditions through which sensemaking leadership influences employees’ attitudes and behaviors.Based on sensemaking theory and existing literature in the area of sensemaking leadership,this study propose a new concept of sensemaking leadership,develop and validate a corresponding measurement scale,and explore and explain the mechanism and boundary conditions of sensemaking leadership in the development of employees’ work engagement.Methodologically,the foregoing research objectives have been realized through mixed methods including both inductive and deductive approaches,qualitative and quantitative analyses,and among others in a series of empirical studies.The foregoing findings thereby contribute to the body of literature significantly in several ways.First,this study proposes the concept of sensemaking leadership based on a systematic review of the relevant literature,organizational sensemaking theory in a combination of symbolic interaction theory and followership theory.In particular,this study defines sensemaking leadership as a process of winning employees’ followership generally through a series of social interaction in the organizational context and specifically through leaders’ efforts in influencing followers’ cues,interpretations as well as their actions.More specifically,this study discusses the presuppositions and key elements of the concept of sensemaking leadership,identifies the dimensionalities of the constructs,clarifies the conceptual difference between sensemaking leadership and other similar leadership.In so doing,this study proposes and validates a measurement model of sensemaking leadership.Largely,the concept of sensemaking leadership in this study is not only free from moral value induction,but also closer to the essence of sensemaking leadership.In fact,the conceptualization of sensemaking leadership in this study not only better inherits the ideas and findings existed in early leadership studies,but also extend our understanding of leadership from the perspective of sensemaking theory.Second,this study have explored the impact of sensemaking leadership on employees’ attitudes and behavior through multiple case studies.Sufficient qualitative data have been collected in several tourism enterprises through behavioral-event interviews,observations,and reviews of relevant documents and websites.The results of data analysis indicates that interviewees have frequently mentioned sensemaking leadership,positive affect,work flourishing and employee engagement.They also indicate that employees’ positive affect,work flourishing and employee engagement are all influenced by sensemaking leadership whose effectiveness is subject to environmental uncertainties.Based on the foregoing,this study proposes a theoretical model of how,why,and under what conditions sensemaking leadership affects employees’ work engagement.Third,this study have developed and validated the sensemaking leadership scale in three independent study samples obtained from employees in domestic tourism enterprises.The procedures and methods in developing the measurement scale in in line with corresponding theories and requirements.In step 1,an item pool of sensemaking leadership was developed based on relevant theories and qualitative data.In step 2,the initial measurement items of sensemaking leadership were examined by a panel of expert evaluation on the content validity of the items.In step 3,the revised item pool was examined in a pilot sample.In step 4,the revised pool was examined in the first formal study.In particular,the first formal sample was divided into two split half samples.In split sample 1,an exploratory factor analysis(EFA)was conducted,followed by the confirmatory factor analysis(CFA)of sensemaking leadership in split sample 2.In step 5,a revised pool of sensemaking leadership was developed based on assessment results of the measurement model developed in the foregoing fourth step.The refined and revised scale was then validated in the second formal study using CFA.The results indicate that the refined scale possesses acceptable levels of psychometric properties.In addition,the factor structure of the scale has been cross validated in two split samples in the second formal study.It shows that factor invariance presents in the foregoing two split samples.As such,a 19-itemed scale of sensemaking leadership presents itself as a second-order factor with three first-order dimensions including bracketing cues,facilitating action,and interpreting suffering.This provides a basis for subsequent quantitative analysis of the data in the second formal study,where the nomological network of sensemaking leadership including its proximal(positive affect and thriving)and distal outcome(i.e.,work engagement),among others have been explored.Notably,this study has exploratorily substantiated the dimensionalities(e.g.,interpreting suffering)of sensemaking leadership as well their theoretical implications.The foregoing studies as well as their findings jointly enable people to better understand the concept of sensemaking leadership.Fourth,this study has examined why,how,and under what condition sensemaking leadership affects employees’ work engagement.The results show that sensemaking leadership is a significant antecedent of employee engagement,positive affect,and thriving at work.They also indicate that positive affect and thriving at work are putative mediators through which sensemaking leadership affects employees’ work engagement.Moreover,they show that environmental uncertainty plays a significant negative moderating effect in the relationship between sensemaking leadership and employees’ thriving at work.Again,the construct of sensemaking leadership has proven itself to have substantial nomological validity.Finally,this study discusses theoretical and practical implications of findings regarding sensemaking leadership as well as its concept,dimensionalities,nomological network.It also acknowledges study limitations and introduces some future research directions.In closing,this study has successfully proposed,developed,and validated a measurement scale of sensemaking leadership.The findings and conclusions regarding sensemaking leadership have both theoretical and practical contributions for future investigators to build on.