Using field-configuring events for sense-making: A cognitive network approach

We explore the usefulness of network analytical techniques to reveal the structure of shared cognitions among participants at a field-configuring event. Using transcripts from a professional conference at a pivotal moment in the emergence of the Jewish lawyers group in pre-state Israel, we analyse the relationships of actors and topics raised at the 1944 meeting. Our analysis demonstrates the underlying centrality of a subset of topics and actors that facilitated shared cognitive sense-making. Subsequent events are consistent with our interpretation that the revealed shared cognitions helped mobilize changes in the organizational field and its institutional logic, including growth in the Jewish legal profession and Jewish judges, use of Hebrew in courts, and establishment of an Israeli bar.