Kendra, JamesWachtendorf, Tricia2008-05-152008-05-152006http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/3194Sensemaking is the study of how individuals and organizations understand what is happening around them. The sensemaking paradigm provides a frame for understanding the gathering and comprehension of information throughout an organization and the capacities for action that are coupled, cause and effect, to that comprehension. Typically, researchers look at sensemaking in a single organization. Recently, interest has developed in distributed sensemaking, with multiple participants discovering meaning and capacities for action in their environment and in their emerging relationships. This paper examines a case of distributed sensemaking, the waterborne evacuation of Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001 in which several hundred thousand commuters left the island in an improvised fleet of assorted harbor craft. Virtually no prior planning existed for this event; hence, the participants collectively derived norms and meaning from their circumstances. The paper relates accepted features of sensemaking to this event, showing how these features varied from their usually-understood forms in order to yield sensemaking that was distributed across geographic and organizational space.en-USTerrorismEvacuationCollective BehaviorWorking Paper