SUDDENLY EVERYTHING BECAME CLEAR: HOW PEOPLE MAKE SENSE OF EPIPHANIES SURROUNDING THEIR WORK AND CAREERS

Although it is widely recognized that many psychological phenomena, such as “insight,” are grounded in nonconscious processing, the manner in which people make sense of these phenomena remains enigmatic. Through the research reported here, I developed theory in this area by exploring how people make sense of a particular form of insight: self-referential insights—or epiphanies—concerning their work or career. My findings indicate that although people view their epiphanies as having played a critical role in resolving psychological tension they once faced, the cognitive operations underlying epiphanies are so inscrutable that people ultimately focus their accounts on the conditions in which they believe their epiphanies were born. As these accounts reveal, people are inclined to at-tribute their epiphanies to serendipitous circumstances. At the same time, people believe their epiphanies came about because they were open to the possibility of being transformed and attuned to events that could help trigger this transformation. These findings provide cause to rethink assumptions in the field of management underlying research on inter-pretation and attribution and illuminate the potentially critical, although undertheorized, role of “readiness” in fostering epiphanies and solving problems at work.