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When hierarchy becomes collaborative: Collaboration as sensemaking frame in high reliability organizing

Rebecca M. Rice (University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA)

Corporate Communications: An International Journal

ISSN: 1356-3289

Article publication date: 9 August 2018

Issue publication date: 9 October 2018

782

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to expand understandings of interorganizational collaboration among high reliability organizations (HROs). It proposes that HROs face unique needs for relationship building, pre-planning, and retrospective sensemaking that do not fit within prior models of collaboration. For HROs, definitions of collaboration vary contextually based on needs that arise during emergency situations. HROs have a need for both hierarchical structure and collaborative processes and use collaboration as a sensemaking frame that allows practitioners to attend to both needs.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses a case study from an ongoing ethnographic study of an emergency response collaboration. The paper uses open-ended interviews about collaboration with all key members of the incident response hierarchy, and participant observation of collaboration before, during and after a key emergency incident.

Findings

The paper proposes a new framework for HRO collaboration: that collaboration is a sensemaking frame for HROs used to make sense of individual actions, that HRO collaboration is more complex during pre-planning and focused on individual decision making during incidents, and that members can communicatively make sense of the need for hierarchy and collaborative action by defining these needs contextually.

Research limitations/implications

The paper uses an in-depth case study of an incident to explore this collaborative framework; therefore, researchers are encouraged to test this framework in additional high reliability collaborative contexts.

Practical implications

The paper includes implications for best communicative practices to recognize the need to be both hierarchical and flexible in high reliability organizing.

Originality/value

This paper fulfills a need to expand collaboration literature beyond idealized and egalitarian definitions, in order to understand how practitioners use communication to understand their actions as collaborative, especially in organizations that also require hierarchy and individual actions. This case study suggests that collaboration as a sensemaking frame creates collaborative advantages for HROs, but can also limit sensemaking about incident management.

Keywords

Citation

Rice, R.M. (2018), "When hierarchy becomes collaborative: Collaboration as sensemaking frame in high reliability organizing", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 23 No. 4, pp. 599-613. https://doi.org/10.1108/CCIJ-04-2017-0032

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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