Existentialism and organizational behaviour : How existentialism can contribute to complexity theory and sense‐making

Purpose – This article aims to develop a conception consisting of insights from complexity theory and additional notions from Weick's sense‐making theory and existentialism for examining organization behaviour. Design/methodology/approach – This paper carries out a literature review of Karl Weick's theory of sense‐making and some notions from existentialism to discuss the possible contributions to complexity theory and with this a further comprehension of organizational behaviour. Findings – Four existential conditions, namely death, freedom, existentialism and meaninglessness, give a further comprehension of Weick's concept of equivocality. Equivocality is an important input for organizing processes. The complexity of organizing processes is an object for examining organizational behaviour from a complexity scientific standpoint. The authors argue that the concept of equivocality and with this the states of equilibrium in an organization can be approached with examining the states of the mentioned four existential conditions. Practical implications – An important point of application for change managers in an organization is equivocality. The increase of equivocality will lead to a shift in the state of equilibrium in which new themes will emerge and corresponding organisational behaviour. The level of equivocality is due to the presence of existential fears. Hence, change managers should focus on existential themes and anxieties in an organization to advance emergent change. Originality/value – New in this paper is the usage of notions from existentialism to elaborate Weick's conception of sense‐making. Also this paper discusses the possible contribution of this elaboration to research of organisational behaviour from the perspective of complexity theory.