Framing and Sensemaking Has Been

¶ … framing and sensemaking has been an ongoing academic debate. At its core is the concept of how people generate that which they interpret (Weick, 13). Karl E. Weick, one of the leaders within the discussion of sensemaking defines it simply as "the making of sense" (Weick, 4). However, the concept of sensemaking can be seen from many different perspectives, such as the structuring of the unknown, the explanation of surprises, or the interaction of information seeking, meaning ascription and associated responses. For Weick, sensemaking highlights the "invention that precedes interpretation...it implies a higher level of engagement by the actor" (Weick, 14). A real appreciation of framing and sensemaking can be observed through a contextual observation of it in real practice. One of the greatest arenas of sensemaking within organizations can be observed through the expansion of Chinese business interests within the world stage and the continuing growth of foreign industry within China. An examination of the key strategies and sensemaking within the marketing industry will fully demonstrate the power of sensemaking that takes place within organizations.

Two organizations demonstrate the sensemaking process; the first is China's Huawei Technologies Company, which in recent years has become one of the world's leading networking and telecommunications equipment suppliers. Although Huawei is considered a private high technology enterprise, its basis of funding comes from the Chinese government and they are considered for the most part a surrogate state-owned multinational corporation. Since 1995, Huawei has made a concerted effort towards market expansion outside of China, and as a result, it has been forced to use sensemaking as a cornerstone to understand the moving markets and resolve the flood of difficulties with global enterprise. The below detailed examination of the sensemaking within their organizations leads to a better understanding of its real application.

This case study will focus on the duality of organizational sensemaking from two conflicting perspectives. How an organization uses sensemaking as it expands from a wholly domestic enterprise into a multinational corporation, and how multinationals from the U.S. uses sensemaking as it applies itself to the Chinese domestic market. The focus will be understanding sensemaking within the framework of organizational behavior and the framing of their understanding of corporate growth.

Background:

Before a deep dive into the case study of Huawei, a basic understanding of sensemaking must be developed. Although at a core level, sensemaking can be seen as "the making of sense"; an organizational perspective is much more sophisticated. Weick identifies seven properties of sensemaking that makes it different from other processes such as understanding, interpreting, and attributing. The first of these is that sensemaking is grounded in identity construction. The process of finding out what is occurring is a product of and a process that is wholly based on who the sense maker is and is becoming. Secondly, Weick explains sensemaking is retrospective, the concept that sensemaking occurs through an examination of historical data.

Third, sensemaking enacts sensible environments. This means that when an organization decides on its domain of activity and then takes action, it creates their own environment for future action. The fourth property is that sensemaking is social. It is not a completely introspective, intrapsychic process, when in fact we make sense of things in organizations while in conversation with others, and thus sensemaking occurs through communication with others. Fifth, sensemaking is an ongoing process. Sensemaking is the process of understanding the moments in the flow of an organization, and therefore reflection occurs continuously. Sensemaking therefore is an ongoing process that is never finished. The sixth property is that it is based on extracted cues. Organizations will consistently extract and bracket certain elements, and these elements become the targets of the sensemaking process. The final property is that it is based in plausibility rather than accuracy. Which means that organizational decision making is often based on odds, will involve intuition as well as analysis and systematic elimination of sub-par choices.

Huawei Case Study:

Huawei Technologies was established in 1988 in Shenzhen, China. Its focus is in research and development, production and marketing of communications equipment, and providing customized network solutions for telecom carriers. As of 2006, Huawei has reached a total of 44,000 employees, of which almost half are dedicated exclusively to research and development. Until recently, Huawei had its reach exclusively within China, having R&D centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Chengdu. However, recently Huawei has established research centers in India, Russia, Sweden as well as the United States. Its international expansion has changed its organization considerably into a multifaceted organization.

Huawei's global sales have reached 11 billion dollars, with 65% of these contracts coming from international markets. Within a very short span, Huawei has become the industry leading vendor. In total market share, Huawei is number two in three separate markets.

Framed within the context of an emerging leader, Huawei sees itself as an extremely flexible organization. When in 1995, it pushed for expansion outside of the domestic Chinese market; it necessitated deep fundamental changes within the framing of the organization and the ongoing sensemaking process. Huawei framed itself as an emerging player within the world market in the wake of globalization. In this context, the organization saw itself in the underdog role and took a strategy of careful negotiation and partnership to attempt to take root in the international market. Their expansion on the international level faced a variety of problems of framing. Globalization has shared a very conflicted vision on the global stage. Some countries and critics frame it through its destructive effects (Martin and Schuman, 1997). They see it as the depletion of natural resources, the destruction of worker's rights, and the weakening of nation-states. While a secondary group, more positively frames globalization as the process of growth in international trade which leads to widely shared benefits and a strong civilizing effect on developing nations. For those caught in between this debate, the frame of a challenging world order under globalization emerges, with critics and nation-states weary that both the negatives and positives of globalization are greatly exaggerated.

For Huawei, the sensemaking of its global expansion is caught in the cross-roads of many different organizational and governmental sensemaking on the world stage. Sensemaking about globalization and its effects on economic and social relations has a dramatic impact on Huawei's own sensemaking. The pejorative of global sensemaking takes place within public discourse. Globalization is being defined by claims-making and contention in the public sphere, as the public becomes the broker between social reality and public consciousness. Huawei underwent a significant change in its core identity as a result of the first step towards sensemaking. As a domestic corporation it gained several significant advantages that allowed itself to frame the organization as a world-class operation. Huawei had earned exclusive contracts from the People's government to provide all telecommunication services for government services and companies. As a result, it became the largest domestic player within several industries in a matter of less than five years. However, on the global stage, at the initiation of Huawei's international push, the organization was nothing more than a bit-player, turning from the number one industry leader domestically to no more than fifth on the world stage. This meant that Huawei had to transform its core framing of itself, and approach the problem of change through meaningful adjustments.

In understanding its new identity as a bit-player rather than dominant force within the industry, Huawei's sensemaking process led it to follow contemporary success models to development, which is to provide cheaper service to clients, and to attract customers the industry leaders ignore. This model was successful in the launch of several industrial giants on the international stage, and has historical success. For Huawei this meant market penetration through multiple channels of distribution. At the time, the leaders within the telecommunications industry were primarily U.S. based multinationals, as a result, the focus of the industry was upon developed nations in North America and Europe. Huawei's framed itself as a bit-player and thus pursued a dominant strategy of reaching out to developing nations with telecommunication needs. Huawei effectively created its own environment for operation by expanding its target market scope to all countries rather than just developed countries. As a result, they concluded several lucrative deals with Middle Eastern countries such as Iran in 1999, Pakistan and India in the past three years. The result is that they built an extremely strong relationship inside nations that were attempting to develop next generation telecommunications but were being ignored by other large multinationals. By framing themselves into the role of an up and coming bit-player rather than a dominant frontrunner, Huawei did not attempt to compete with other multinationals for limited market share. Rather their framing allowed them to increase the scope of their environment to include emerging markets and thus work within markets that other multinationals ignored.

The sensemaking process of Huawei has led to become a truly inspirational force within the world market. Huawei's meteoric rise had to do with its constant soul-searching at an organizational level and consistent redefinition. Just as Weick pointed out, Huawei took sensemaking as an ongoing process. As emerging markets began to play a bigger and bigger role in the wake of globalization. Huawei realized that although its strong position within emerging markets was making the organization highly profitable, it was a limiting strategy in the long run. By late 2004, Huawei used its domestic contacts to change its organization's framing into a wholly different perspective. Huawei began framing itself as an industry leader, using the social dialogue that was occurring in emerging nations to be the infrastructure of support for its expansion into developed markets. Since Huawei could provide the same level of service and next generation telecommunication technology for much cheaper, just as its model towards emerging markets worked in their favor, the same occurred within developed markets. In effect, Huawei combined what it had learned as a bit-player, to operate in a cost effective manner and to strongly push its R&D in radical new direction, it merged its former frame with a combination of a dominant strategy to take over the developed markets. At an organizational level, Huawei intuitively understood the globalization movement without having a clear picture of the exacting implications. They understood that brand loyalty and domestic protectionism was quickly disappearing on the international stage, and was being replaced by cost-effective and technology driven innovation. Consumers in different developed markets no longer saw industry protection as a positive factor, and thus the competition was now-based much more on quality and cost rather than brand and national loyalty. This intuitive understanding of how the framing of globalization affected their own organization applies the final rule of sensemaking.