Frank Fiedrich

This article revisits Weick’s (1988) influential paper on enacted sensemaking in crisis situations, exploring how organisational actors actively construct and interpret their environments during crises. It outlines Weick’s background, the context of the Journal of Management Studies , and the main contributions of the original work, including the enactment framework and its focus on commitment, capacity and expectations. Furthermore, it assesses the impact of Weick’s ideas on crisis management research, particularly their role in shaping high reliability theory. It critically examines the structure, logic and evidence of the 1988 paper, noting its conceptual strengths, reliance on qualitative analysis and limitations regarding empirical validation and generalisability. The review highlights how Weick’s work redirected crisis analysis away from technical failures toward the processes of enacted sensemaking within organisations.