Antecedents and consequences of organizations' technology sensemaking capability

Abstract

As an intriguing concept, organizational sensemaking has attracted many researchers from a variety of disciplines. However, a specific context of the sensemaking concept, a firm's sensemaking capability on technology-related information and strategy development (i.e., technology sensemaking capability) has rarely been reported in the literature. In this study, we investigate how technology sensemaking capability of organizations influences their product and process innovativeness as well as how the use of organizational memory contents, such as declarative, procedural, and emotional memory, affects development of the technology sensemaking capability of organizations. By studying 203 firms, we found that (1) employing an organization's declarative, procedural, and emotional memory facilitates the development of its technology sensemaking capability, (2) technology sensemaking capability positively affects the product development and process implementation efforts of the firm, and (3) technology sensemaking capability partially mediates the relationship between organizational memory contents and firm product and process innovativeness. Also, we investigated the moderating role of environmental turbulence (e.g., technology and market turbulence) on the relationship between organizational memory contents and technology sensemaking capability. We found that declarative and emotional memory has an inverted U-shaped (boolean AND-shaped) relationship with technology sensemaking capability with increasing levels of environmental turbulence. Theoretical and managerial implications of this study are discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.