Discovering information behavior in sense making. II. The social

This article, the second of three, used the methods of ethnography of communication to explore the social elements of information behavior in sense making of participants in the annual work planning of a unit of a public agency. In particular, this article focuses on the role of information in the sense making that took place from the point of view of the organization and other social communication aspects of work life. The organizational sense-making analysis considers the instantiation of various properties relating to the organization's strategies for survival (identity), history (retrospect), and relations with its environment (extraction of cues). Taken together, the instantiation of these properties structures and supports what, where, when, why, and how information behaviors are employed in sense making. Also considered is the social role of various communicative events (e.g., meetings, conversations, written messages) in the sense making of the parties to the work-planning task. Communicative events also provide situations for and constraints on the role of information behavior in sense making. A fundamental finding is that the participants in the work-planning process did not think of information or actions to collect, process, or use information as something separate from the task or problem at hand. Attention to this fact suggests that information systems that exist to support tasks in social settings need to be integrated into organizational or institutional designs. Otherwise, such systems are likely to exist, consume resources, and divert attention away from the basic issues, problems, and sense making of tasks and situations.