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Designing learning experiences that mimic real-life contexts has always been a challenge for leadership educators. As a result, many educators in leadership courses rely on studies of leadership perspectives, selfassessment activities, and textbook case analysis. However, many educators also successfully design microlevel processes and interactions that offer students the opportunity to experience the dynamics of power and influence whereby they practice leadership. Others explore the daunting challenges of placing students in various organizations to practice leadership. This latter type of practicing leadership is often full of challenges because of the reluctance of organizations to allow practicing students in decision making processes. In this paper, I present a two-week teaching segment in which leader dilemmas are used as inputs for practicing leadership in micro-level processes. The segment is designed in such a way that it mimics real life group dynamics, problem solving, and decision dilemmas. The objective is to provide a context wherein students practice micro-influence making as they experience the complexity of group life and, at the same time, learn to reflect on their learning, emotion, and the potential capacity to lead and follow.

This study examines how executive directors of family business centers deploy sensemaking to create psychologically safe environments while engaging members in peer group activities.

A qualitative case study approach was employed, involving semi-structured interviews with five executive directors from four different family business centers in the USA. The study also draws on document analysis.

The findings reveal that these directors navigate a complex and uncertain environment where the need for member engagement and the need for a safe environment sometimes contradict each other. Their sensemaking draws on both cognitive and social processes to accomplish meaning-making, often involving a cyclical process of noticing, discernment and enactment. This effort is, at times, constrained by the directors’ inability to gather cues due to their commitment to maintaining confidentiality and privacy within peer groups, limiting their ability to directly observe discussions. Despite this constraint, sensemaking enhances the directors’ capability to foster safe and engaging environments, though the challenge of balancing members’ needs for confidentiality with a safe and productive engagement environment remains a continuous reality.

This study highlights the crucial role of sensemaking leadership in family business networks, requiring directors to balance individual and group needs. Leadership development should focus on enhancing this sensemaking ability. Family business centers must be designed with flexibility and adaptability to accommodate evolving needs. This involves attentive observation, balanced programs, psychological safety and continuous learning. These findings extend to any peer group requiring high trust, emphasizing the leader’s role in creating a safe and engaging environment that balances individual needs with collective goals.

This study makes several original contributions to the literature. First, it extends existing knowledge on sensemaking by exploring its application in a previously under-researched context: how executive directors navigate complexity and uncertainty within family business networks. Second, it examines how sensemaking informs the ongoing challenge of balancing peer groups’ need for a safe engagement environment with the need for productive engagement, an area that has not been explicitly addressed in prior research. By shedding light on these under-explored aspects of sensemaking, this study offers valuable insights for both researchers and practitioners involved in family business networks and peer group management.

This study aimed to investigate the sensemaking strategies employed by early-career employees working within organizationally constrained environments.

Grounded in the sensemaking-as-accomplishment framework, a longitudinal multi-case study was conducted, involving three early-career employees. These participants were interviewed multiple times concerning tasks they themselves identified as anomalous and ambiguous.

The study's findings illuminate how early-career employees utilize sensemaking strategies to accomplish anomalous-ambiguous tasks. These strategies are interwoven with deliberate efforts to mitigate organizational constraints that exist in the organization or arise during the execution of complex tasks.

Notable limitation pertains to the time gap between task completion and the interviews. Conducting real-time interviews concurrently with task execution or immediately afterward was not feasible due to constraints in participant availability. This research has implications for organizational learning initiatives, particularly those encompassing employee-driven self-learning components. Insights derived from studies like this can inform the development of effective self-learning schemes within organizations.

Previous sensemaking research focused on what takes place in high-reliability organizations. This study explored sensemaking strategies in workplaces that are organizationally constrained.

The geographical range of agricultural crops is shifting because of climate change. Reducing the potential negative impact of this shift requires efficient crop switching at farm level. Yet there are scant studies that examine how crop switching is currently taking place and what factors facilitate the process. Even these few existing studies often based their analysis on inadequately established causal link between climate change and switching decisions. This study aims to identify the specific switching decisions that are primarily motivated by climate change, and their determinants.

The study used a household survey on 190 households in Semien Shewa Zone in Ethiopia. Subjective rating of farmers was used to identify the relative importance of climate change in motivating the different types of switching decisions. A logit model is used to identify determinants of crop switching decisions primarily motivated by climate change.

Farmers in the study area are currently abandoning certain crops as a response to climate change. The adoption of new crops is, however, mainly attributed to price changes. Most farmers who abandoned at least one crop adopted mung bean mainly due to its price advantages. As expected, crop switching as an adaptation strategy is more prevalent particularly in drier and hotter agroecologies. The logit model showed that crop switching is strongly correlated with land size and agroecology.

This paper provides an in-depth examination of crop switching as an adaptation strategy to climate change. Crop switching is an adaptation strategy that is expected to substantially reduce the damage from climate change in agriculture. The findings are particularly relevant for adaptation planning in the context of smallholder agriculture.