Earlier research on grand challenges already emphasized that complex, large-scale issues can only be understood and addressed if organizations engage in joint sensemaking with other organizations. While we know that these collaborations are emergent with regards to participating organizations and their ways of interacting, it remains unexplored how these dynamics are related to the process of interorganizational sensemaking. Drawing on a 3-year longitudinal, single case study of a collaboration which aims at building a circular supply chain in the construction industry, we find that facilitators navigate breakdowns in interorganizational sensemaking through constantly introducing new and parallel ways of how organizations interact to bracket and interpret cues. Thereby, they create an ecosystem of interorganizational sensemaking wherein grand challenges are split into multiple cues of different complexity. The level of complexity of each cue determines how sensemaking is organized to enable both the interpretation and the actionability.
