Talking about machines
Discursive sensemaking and workplace learning in the age of AI
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21458765 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Martin Viktorelius (0000-0003-3373-2171, Halmstad University, corresponding author), Simon Larsson (0000-0002-2589-7964, Uppsala University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 634-652 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Continuing Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0158-037X • E-ISSN: 1470-126X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0158037x.2025.2570144 |
| OpenAlex | W4414914196 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 85 |
The diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI) into organisational settings presents new challenges for professional learning. Unlike earlier technologies, machine-learning systems are characterised by opacity, adaptability, and indeterminate outputs, which complicates how professionals understand, trust, and integrate them into practice. While research on workplace learning has examined digital tools as mediators of knowledge acquisition, less attention has been paid to how professionals discursively negotiate the meaning of AI itself. This article examines sensemaking during the development and attempted implementation of an AI tool for maritime operations. Based on an ethnographic study of a two-year innovation project involving developers, data scientists, captains, and shore managers, the analysis focuses on interactional episodes of dialogue and negotiation. The study shows how developers’ sensegiving, often framed through metaphors of improved vision and prediction, clashed with maritime professionals’ counter-narratives grounded in pragmatic routines, institutional constraints, and conceptions of competence. These discursive tensions limited the possibility of collaborative learning and hindered adoption. By conceptualising sensemaking as a situated discursive accomplishment embedded in sociomaterial practice, the article contributes to research on workplace learning and technology by advancing a contextual model of inter-professional sensemaking that illuminates the conditions under which emerging technologies are integrated, reinterpreted, or resisted
Discourse analysis · Ethnography · Negotiation · Sensemaking · Situated · Situated learning · Software deployment · Workplace learning · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Innovative Education and Learning Practices · Management and Organizational Studies
Social Practices
Technology in Action
Narrative Methods for Organizational & Communication Research
Representing Reality
Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically
Communities of Practice
Perspective Making and Perspective Taking in Communities of Knowing
Narratives as Sources of Stability and Change in Organizations
Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation
Triggers And Enablers Of Sensegiving In Organizations
To Engage or Not to Engage with AI for Critical Judgments
A Pragmatic View of Knowledge and Boundaries
Sharing Meaning Across Occupational Communities
Reframing Professional Development Through Understanding Authentic Professional Learning
Technological frames
Making Sense of Sensemaking in Organization Studies
Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking
Artificial intelligence and work transformations
Communities, boundary practices and incentives for knowledge sharing
The algorithm at work? Explanation and repair in the enactment of similarity in art data
Understanding extended narrative sensemaking
Finding the Organization in the Communication
Working and organizing in the age of the learning algorithm
Reassembling the Social
Unpacking AI at work
Co-creation with machine learning
Relations in Practice
Making sense of professional identities
From hero to villain to hero
Varieties of Discourse
How practice makes sense in healthcare operations
Human-Machine Reconfigurations
Talking about machines
Zooming In and Out
Making sense of sensemaking narratives
Situated Learning
Algorithmic assemblages of care
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |