ABSTRACT

Sensemaking is an explanatory process, built out of actions and interpretations. That process becomes salient when expectations are disconfirmed and significance and valence are imposed on the interruption in ways that shape the recovering. Whistleblowing is a story of a deepening struggle to make sense under conditions in which a growing set of implications become increasingly incompatible. A sensemaking perspective leans toward the existential: life is a void until it is lived. But that living tends to be understood after the fact, based on rolling hindsight. Whistleblowing, thus, involves consequential moments among the more numerous moments of interruptions and recoveries in everyday life.