Being Sensable about Sensation: Introduction to the Special Issue

One of the unique facets of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (SCOS) isits conference theme, designed, as it is, to encourage participants to think about organizationsand organizing in very different ways. A classic example was the ‘empty space’ theme of the1997 Warsaw conference, which challenged participants to rethink the boundaries and veryconcept of organizational life. Other years have focused on violence (Dublin, 2001), speed(Budapest, 2002), and excess (Stockholm, 2005).In 2004 Halifax, on Canada’s eastern seaboard of Nova Scotia, was the site of the annualSCOS conference, and the initial theme was ‘Sense and Sensibility.’ Apart from the obviousliterary allusion, the juxtapositioning of the two words was designed to illicit papers focusedon anything from the various ways that people make sense of, and in, organizations, throughappreciations and responses ‘to complex emotional or aesthetic influences,’ to the way thatpeople develop sensitivities ‘that make them readily offended or shocked’ (Oxford AmericanDictionaries, 1.0.1) by aspects of organizational life.However, as with all sensemaking devices, the Halifax theme generated different under-standings among those involved—in this case, the members of the SCOS Board. One of theexpressed concerns was that the theme might be narrowly translated as a call for papers focusedaround Weick’s (1995, 2001) notion of organizational sensemaking, and, as a result, might notgenerate enough, or a sufficient range of, papers to encourage creative readings. In Weickianterms, growing interest in his work may have provided saturated cues in on-going organizationaldebates to trigger a narrower reading of any theme that linked sense and organization.In the ensuing debates among SCOS Board members a new theme—’Sensation and Orga-nization’—emerged that had the beauty of retaining the previous focus on sensemaking,albeit in a more subdued fashion, while highlighting the apparently narrower yet moreambiguous notion of sensation. On the one hand, sensation can be defined as a noun thatdescribes ‘a physical feeling or perception resulting from something that happens to or comesinto contact with the body [or] the capacity to have such feelings or perceptions’ (OxfordAmerican Dictionaries, 1.0.1). Yet on the other hand, it might be seen as ‘a widespread reac-tion of interest and excitement [or] a person, object, or event that arouses such interest andexcitement’ (Oxford American Dictionaries, 1.0.1).Reflecting the reconstructed theme, the call for papers was focused on ‘the senses which[organizational] symbols arouse, and the sense we make of them.’

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