The individual and decision-making amidst organizational sensemaking in business ecosystems

This chapter examines decision-making among individuals in a business-to-business setting characterized by ecosystemic thinking. Business ecosystems are a form of multi-sector collaboration and can be considered mission-driven, meaning that the participating actors share a common goal to address a grand challenge, an innovation outcome, or another purpose such as standardization or lobbying. Ecosystemic thinking thus spans boundaries for interaction, learning, and action, which proposes new contexts for sensemaking and decision-making for individual managers. This chapter draws on interviews with B2B managers actively involved in orchestrating business ecosystems. Based on 22 informants’ narratives on the establishment and initial stage of business ecosystems, decision-making by managers is related to three processes, namely, (a) deciding on the essence of the ecosystem (i.e., creating interdependence), (b) deciding on actions (i.e., the relevance of “holding environments”), and (c) deciding on partnerships (i.e., choosing intentional partnerships).