Faculty of Management

On behalf of the Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, the Dean of the Faculty of Management, andthe MSc (Mgt) Program, the Faculty is delighted to report that Ms. Kristal Frank successfully defended her thesis, “A Sensemaking Exploration of Work-Eldercare Crisis and the Co-Construction of Informal Work-Eldercare Policies”, yesterday morning (April 30). The abstract from Kristal’s thesis document is outlined below. 

Please join us in congratulating Kristal – well done! 

A special thank you to members of Kristal's Thesis Examination Committee:

External Examiner
Professor Rosemary McGowan, Associate Professor
Leadership, Business Technology Management
Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford Campus

Supervisor    
Dr. Mary Runté

Readers       
Dr. Richard Perlow
Dr. Pamela Loewen

Abstract - This study will contribute to existing work–family research by bringing a rich emic understanding of caregivers’ experience with work-eldercare crisis. I adopted Weick’s theory of organizational sensemaking (1995) as method and methodology for this research. I collected data via open-ended, semi-structured interviews with employees who balance full-time employment with caregiving for an elderly person; then I subjected the transcribed texts to a detailed thematic analysis. This analysis helped me identify three main themes that reflect the processes participants use to ‘make sense’ of their experiences. The results of this study suggest that caregivers enact the work environment to attempt creating balance—and to enlist support and assistance—by strategically engaging in interpersonal interactions with others at work about their eldercare activities. They combine past experience with the knowledge obtained from these interactions to develop heuristic scripts, and then use them to enable understanding and guide future behaviour and actions.

This study demonstrates that sensemaking is a useful analytical framework through which to examine employees’ experience of the work-family interface. The findings of this research offer insight into the processes involved in the social construction of informal organizational policies; the implications provide a foundation to develop better models of organizational response towards employees’ work-eldercare needs.