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Yet it has offered limited guidance on how organizational actors use formal and informal power to advance competing accounts and on why some narratives become legitimate. A power and politics approach addresses these gaps, using an empirical community college case about “equity” to show forces that (il)legitimate meaning.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/power-and-politics-in-the-quest-for-meaning/600217/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/power-and-politics-in-the-quest-for-meaning/600217.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"RuangKosong","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-01","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":29},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What gap does a power and politics approach address in sensemaking research?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It addresses how organizational actors leverage formal and informal power to advance their version of events and how particular narratives gain legitimacy over others.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does sensemaking framework reality in organizational life?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Sensemaking treats reality as an ongoing accomplishment where people generate frames and narratives to articulate ambiguous situations, rationalize past behavior, and decide next moves.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What does the study investigate using the “equity” case at a community college?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It demonstrates how a power and politics analysis identifies and interrogates implicit and explicit forces within and outside the organization that make certain meanings (il)legitimate.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},600217,1792165782,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":29,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":46,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":31},962090883219,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","| | Power and Politics in the “Quest for Meaning” |\n| --- | --- |\n|  |  |\n\nCheryl D. Ching, University of Massachusetts Boston  \nAbstract  \nSensemaking is a popular frameworkfor studying the meaning-making dimensions of policy implementation, change initiatives, and practitioner action in education. While generative, it has traditionally offered less guidance on how certain organizational actors have formal and/or informal power to advance their version of events and how certain narratives gain legitimacy over others. A power and politics approach addresses these lacunae. Yet, to date, this approach is little used in education research, despite the fact that contests over meaning and meaning-making are routine in educational institutions. Using an empirical case of meaning-making about “equity” at a community college, this study demonstrates how a power and politics analysis identifies and interrogates the forces—implicit and explicit, within and outside an organization—that make meaning(s)  \n(il)legitimate.  \nKeywords: equity, community colleges, higher education, sensemaking, power and politics, qualitative research  \nIntroduction  \nMeaning and meaning-making are foundational to organizational life, shaping how people make decisions, respond to new reforms, and enact routine practices (Zilber, 2002, 2008) . In education research,“sensemaking,” particularly as theorized by Karl Weick (1995; Weick et al., 2005), is a popular approach for examining the ideational aspects of organizations (e.g., Coburn, 2001; Duncheon & Muñoz 2019; Kezar, 2013). Framed as a “quest for meaning”(Weick et al. 2005, p. 409), organizational sensemaking occurs when a “shock”—typically in the form of new leadership, reforms, and/or ongoing crises—usher in situations that people find “novel, ambiguous, confusing, or in some other way violate expectations”(Maitlis & Christianson 2014, p. 57) . Grounded in a constructivist epistemology, sensemaking treats reality as an “ongoing accomplishment” in which people generate frames and narratives to articulate ambiguous situations, rationalize past behavior, and determine next moves (Weick, 1995, p. 15) .  \nAs a framework, sensemaking has advanced analyses of policy implementation (e.g., Coburn, 200l), change initiatives (e.g., Kezar, 2013), and practitioner thinking and action (e.g., Duncheon & Muñoz, 2019) in K-12 and higher education. It has provided concepts to dissect the sensemaking process, including “equivocality,” which is the co-existence of different interpretations ofthe same thing (Weick, 1979), and “labeling,” which is the act of differentiating what is and is not the thing being made sense of (Weick et al., 2005) . It has drawn attention to elements such as “cues” that are extracted from the environment and that focus sensemaking; the influence  \nof identity, belief structures, past experience, and social interactions on meaning-making; the construction of plausible, rather than accurate, narratives; and the idea that through sensemaking, people enact their social world (Weick, 1995) . These elements are featured in Coburn’s (2001) policy implementation study—one of the most cited education studies of the last two decades—which shows that implementation fidelity was challenged by the cues teachers extracted from the policy environment, their world views and practices, and the direction and tenor of collective discussions. But while generative for investigating meaning-making, Weick’s (1995) framework offers less guidance on how some individuals are able to advance their version of events and how certain narratives gain legitimacy over others (Helms Mills et al., 2010) . Research suggests that contests over meaning and meaning-making in organizations are routine, thus beckoning questions about power and politics (Zilber, 2008) .  \nAccounting for Power and Politics in Organizational Sensemaking  \nTo address these lacunae, organization scholars have investigated how forces outside and inside organiza","cbCaioCZWB4B3G6a","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaioCZWB4B3G6a","pdf",355924,"English","# Abstract\n# Introduction\n# Accounting for Power and Politics in Organizational Sensemaking","[{\"question\":\"What gap does a power and politics approach address in sensemaking research?\",\"answer\":\"It addresses how organizational actors leverage formal and informal power to advance their version of events and how particular narratives gain legitimacy over others.\"},{\"question\":\"How does sensemaking framework reality in organizational life?\",\"answer\":\"Sensemaking treats reality as an ongoing accomplishment where people generate frames and narratives to articulate ambiguous situations, rationalize past behavior, and decide next moves.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the study investigate using the “equity” case at a community college?\",\"answer\":\"It demonstrates how a power and politics analysis identifies and interrogates implicit and explicit forces within and outside the organization that make certain meanings (il)legitimate.\"}]","Power and Politics in the “Quest for Meaning” | PDF",1792090261]