Sensemaking and Digital Technology in Human Service Organizations

Year 2021

Title “Making Sense of Technological Change in Human Service Organizations: An Exploratory Literature Review”

Organization The CUNY Graduate Center

Project Type Research paper

Role Researcher & Author

Skills used Literature review design, Zotero, word processing, Canva, PowerPoint

Description

In Fall 2021, for the class "SSW 750000: Development of Practice Knowledge in Social Welfare", taught by Professor Barbra Teater, PhD, I created a literature review and research proposal exploring how social work organizations navigate technological change. I reviewed prior studies of technology in social work and relevant studies of technological change in organizations. I found that social work research on digital technology and change did not often focus on organizations as a unit of analysis. I proposed a qualitative research study grounded in the organizational psychologist Karl Weick’s concept of sense-making, to better understand how human service organizations navigated technological change during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly when new technologies were rapidly adopted and future environmental stability seemed most uncertain.

Images below are from a presentation on my project, which included audiovisual components: