Produção de sentido em processos decisórios: um estudo no contexto de eventos inesperados na perspectiva da análise da conversa

Abstract

This work deals with sensemaking and organizational decision in risk and stress situations. These situations are constant in complex organizations that need security in their processes. In emergency times, workers interact together in order to understand the situation and make decisions to decrease errors and accidents. To study the interactions, the approach of ethnomethodology (GARFINKEL, 1967) and Conversation Analysis (SACKS, 1992) are shown as theoretical-methodological options for the understanding of the conversational workers actions. Furthermore, there is a gap in organizational research regarding the analysis of sensemaking processes (WEICK, 1995) from data in real time (LLEWELLYN; HINDMARSCH, 2010). This study analyzes the sensemaking underlying the decisionmaking in unexpected events of a High Reliability Organizations from the perspective of Conversation Analysis. To achieve our goals we conducted a case study in an Operation System Center electric which co-ordinates, controls and supervises the operational process of transmission lines and substations in Brazil. In this applied context, were selected and described five unexpected events that form the units of analysis in this research. We also collected and transcribed 82 talk-in-interaction in real-time, between supervisors and operators and other agents of the Operation System Center, that occurred during the unexpected events. Each one was described and analyzed excerpts of talk-in-interaction from the perspective of Conversation Analysis and from the point of view of complex organizations (PERROW, 1999; WEICK, SUTCLIFFE, 2001). The results indicate the importance of micro-level analysis to understand how decision making processes and sensemaking are formed in the practice of daily work, proving to be dependent on the conversational actions that are created between the speakers, influencing the course of decision. There were seen evidences that workers are guided according to a conversational macrostructure involving the investigation of four guiding questions: (i) What is happening?, (ii) What must we do?, (iii ) What do we do? and (iv) Why must we do? Thus, the workers together and sequentially look for dealing with these issues in their interactions in the process of sensemaking and decision making that culminates when there is a clarification of the decision, and also devotes attention to the complex organizational system through the emergence of cognitive states. Another contribution refers to the understanding of the agent in between as an intermediate agent that has high cognitive demands of producing meaning in the interaction. Finally theoretical contributions, methodological and applied are explained and suggest future research.