Sensemaking and <i>Management Learning</i> : Productive tensions and unrealized possibilities

In this article I aim to provide a critical review of how sensemaking has featured in Management Learning and beyond, with wider reflections on productive tensions and unrealized possibilities for guiding future contributions to management research and practice. Relationships between learning and sensemaking have generally been considered as involving various processual tensions, but often conceptualized as productive tensions whereby they mutually inform, complement and rebalance each other. I argue that renewed engagement with these tensions in management can reveal unrealized possibilities for exploring what it means to be a knowing, learning, sensemaking subject in contemporary organizational environments. I organize my reflections based on the relationships between sensemaking and four other areas: (1) critical management studies, (2) reflexivity, (3) learning and (4) education. Going forward, sensemaking contributions in management may be best served by continuing to explore more diverse traditions and projects alongside and beyond the estimable contributions of Karl Weick.