Situation management
Lars Klemsdal · 2025
This chapter develops the concept of situation management as a suggestion to what we need managers for in contemporary world of work. Situation management is about enhancing reflexivity in the processes of situational sensemaking. This can be done by “zooming in” on what’s going on in everyday performance of tasks, through systematic articulation of these experiences, in order to sort between what we can build further on and what to stop doing of what we already do. And then “zooming out” on what could be going on, or actually done, by expanding or changing the contextual boundaries of possible projects for action and frames for interpretation and negotiation. All regions of the context can be target of such deliberate changes, spanning enhancing personnel capacities, creating new interaction platforms between collaborators, reconceptualizing norms and techniques as well as adding or subtracting material and technological resources. Situation management thus refers to a way of indirect management by design, through influencing actor’s horizons of possibility for making sense of their work situations. Finally, I will discuss the advantages of the formal management position for doing situation management, and how to positioning oneself for this.