Community leaders’ sensemaking of environmental jolts
Stabilizing and silver lining framing of disruption
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6077076 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rebecca Lowenhaupt (0000-0001-9100-1145, Boston College, corresponding author), Gabrielle Oliveira (0000-0001-7160-6593, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), M Lima Becker (0000-0003-4911-5506, Boston College), Betty S Lai (0000-0003-4701-2706, Boston College) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 177-197 |
| Publication date | 2024-04-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Community Practice (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1070-5422 • E-ISSN: 1543-3706 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10705422.2024.2349037 |
| OpenAlex | W4396623392 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 48 |
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a defining catastrophe for many communities across the world. This study focuses on a small, urban community in the United States at the regional epicenter of the pandemic with high rates of illness, death, financial hardships, and a halt to in-person school and services that lasted over a year. Drawing on institutional theory with a focus on environmental jolts and leadership sensemaking, we conducted a thematic analysis of 20 interviews with cross-sector community leaders, including city officials, school district administrators, directors of community-based organizations, and church leaders to evaluate how they made sense of COVID-19 disruptions and framed their responses to the environmental jolt caused by the pandemic in Spring, 2021. Findings illustrate how leaders framed the jolt as highlighting existing issues, maintained a focus on priorities and purpose pre-dating disruptions, and emphasized opportunities emerging from the crisis. We discuss how leaders engaged in sensemaking both as a form of stabilization, providing a rationale for maintaining pre-pandemic priorities, and as a way to motivate and leverage opportunity through an emphasis on the silver lining of the jolt. We close with implications of these findings for ongoing and future responses to environmental jolts and crises
Community engagement · Framing (construction · Geography · Leverage (statistics · Political science · Public relations · Qualitative research · Sensemaking · Social science · Sociology · Thematic analysis · Community Health and Development · Disaster Management and Resilience · Religion, Society, and Development
Sensemaking in organizations
“What the Hell Is This, and Who the Hell Are You?” Role and Identity Negotiation in Research-Practice Partnerships
Shaping Teacher Sensemaking
Triggers And Enablers Of Sensegiving In Organizations
Classifying Managerial Responses to Multiple Organizational Identities
Managing in the Middle
Policy Implementation and Cognition
Collective Sensemaking about Reading
A Review of the Literature on Community Resilience and Disaster Recovery
Institutional Effects of Interorganizational Collaboration
Agendas, alternatives, and public policies
The role of local community leaders in flood disaster risk management strategy making in Accra
Leading during a pandemic – what the evidence tells us
Adapting to a jolt
The impact of received social support on posttraumatic growth after disaster
Unequal Protection Revisited
Opening the policy window for ecological economics
Im/migrant children’s stories in elementary school
Advancing Integration
Beyond Boundary Spanning
Organisation and delivery of social services in extreme events
Threat Rigidity, School Reform, and How Teachers View Their Work Inside Current Education Policy Contexts
Rural Cross-Sector Collaboration
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |