Sense-making as a process within complex service-led projects

Sense-making is a well-established perspective in strategic management and organization studies but to date has had little impact on the analysis of project management theory and practice. In this paper, we draw upon insights from the sense-making literature to consider the management of complex long-term service-led engineering projects, which combine the supply of capital goods or infrastructure with a long-term service provision. Using a case study of the Pendolino tilting train, we illustrate how significant discontinuities gave rise to the need for sense-making by the different project participants and stakeholders and how the various narratives expressed by different social groupings shaped the management and progress of the project.