Discovering Information Behavior in Sense Making: II. The Social

This article, the second of three, used the methods of ble impacts of several different research views on inforethnography of communication to explore the social elemation behavior in relation to other aspects of people’s ments of information behavior in sense making of particilives. Part I (Solomon, 1997a) provides an overview of pants in the annual work planning of a unit of a public the conceptual foundations, background, and methodolagency. In particular, this article focuses on the role of ogy covering all three parts as well as the time and timing information in the sense making that took place from the point of view of the organization and other social view. Part II, provided in this article, considers the social communication aspects of work life. The organizational by focusing on organizational properties of sense making sense-making analysis considers the instantiation of and the communicative events that support the creation various properties relating to the organization’s strateof common ground and the development of meaning from gies for survival ( identity) , history (retrospect) , and relaoften widely dispersed facts and points of view. Part III tions with its environment (extraction of cues). Taken together, the instantiation of these properties structures (Solomon, 1997b) considers patterns of individual sense and supports what, where, when, why, and how informamaking that influenced the work-planning process as well tion behaviors are employed in sense making. Also conas a conceptual synthesis of all three parts. The whole sidered is the social role of various communicative of the study is brought together briefly in Solomon (in events (e.g., meetings, conversations, written mespress) . sages) in the sense making of the parties to the workplanning task. Communicative events also provide situaThe study as a whole sought to explore the role and tions for and constraints on the role of information beplace of information in the annual work planning of a unit havior in sense making. A fundamental finding is that the of a public agency. This organization provided technical participants in the work-planning process did not think of information or actions to collect, process, or use inforassistance related to conservation and appropriate use of mation as something separate from the task or problem natural resources such as rivers, trails, and open space. at hand. Attention to this fact suggests that information Provision of assistance was dependent upon the largess systems that exist to support tasks in social settings of the legislature. Thus, the work-planning process was need to be integrated into organizational or institutional designs. Otherwise, such systems are likely to exist, uncertain in that there was no assurance of funding until consume resources, and divert attention away from the funds were actually appropriated, let alone what the level basic issues, problems, and sense making of tasks and of funding would be if funds were provided. The process, situations. thus, was one of obtaining technical assistance project proposals from regional offices and, then, evaluating and ranking those proposals so that the ‘‘best’’ projects would Introduction be funded and work begun. The study continued over This study is being reported in three parts for several three annual iterations of this work-planning process to reasons: to provide the rich description that is the hallunderstand how the advance of time and resulting changes mark of ethnographic research, to provide details of the from year to year influenced information behavior. data and analysis necessary to allow readers to make their The methods employed were those of ethnography of own interpretations and judgments, and to highlight possicommunication (Saville-Troike, 1989). I was involved as a participant observer during the process. My role was one of record keeping and facilitation. This role enabled Received June 27, 1996; revised January 27, 1997; accepted February me to collect information, record and observe meetings 21, 1997. and other communicative events, ask questions, and otherwise collect the data underlaying the analysis. It also q 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.