Through the mist: how institution-knowledge bricoleurs make sense of a crisis

Abstract As society faces more crises, it is critical for leaders, especially at the local level, to make decisions and intervene before reaching the tipping point. This often requires collective sensemaking across boundaries, but most studies focus on the challenges. This article asks how decision makers make timely decisions. It presents an institutions-process framework and analyzes the process and mechanism in the case of the response of E-Zhong City—just over an hour’s drive from Wuhan City in Hubei Province—to COVID-19 in the “Golden Seven Days” of 2020. Decision makers achieved timely decisions by exploiting all possible political opportunities and institutional tools, maximizing the diversity of the information available, and using multiple discourses and frameworks to enhance personal crisis awareness and achieve collective sensemaking across boundaries. This article defines the mechanism as bricolage and defines these decision makers as institution-knowledge bricoleurs. The concept of institution-knowledge bricoleurs extends the study of crisis decision making and the relationship between institutions and sensemaking.