Karl E Weick
Biographic Data
| ID | 284605 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karl E Weick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karl E |
| FAMILY NAME | Weick |
| SIGNATURE | WEICK K E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 420 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1964 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Perspective Construction in Organizational Behavior
The study of organizational behavior involves constrained comprehension of constrained acting. Perspectives on organizational behavior gain and lose their breadth, substance, and credibility as the person doing the explaining is modified by ongoing experience. These ongoing modifications shape the interpretations that are summarized in a perspective. These dual constraints on comprehension and action form a “career-long voice.” This article explo…
Theory
Theory, which is about suppositions that are general, idealized, and abstract, can easily be misunderstood in a field like organizational behavior where pragmatists, practitioners, and positivists worry about practice, profits, and precision.
Managing the Unexpected
The affective foundations of high-reliability organizing
The factors that compel individuals to exert the extraordinary effort needed to create high reliability—consistent error-free performance under trying conditions—remain unspecified. Here, we propose that when individuals experience emotional ambivalence and prosocial motivation, it induces the broad thinking and other-orientation that undergird mindful organizing and high reliability. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Laboratory Experimentation with Organizations 1
Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. It comes as no particular surprise to discover that a scientist formulates problems in a way which requires for their solution just those techniques in which he himself is especially skilled ( Kaplan, 1964, p. 28 ).
Making the Most of Mess
Peer Reviewed
Organized sensemaking
The contributions to this special issue focus on links among sensemaking, organizing, and storytelling. They are re-examined in terms of to what the authors pay attention, with what, and for what. In pursuit of linkages, authors attend to accounts of consulting failure, hearings about the recent financial crisis, life history storytelling by elite actors, conflict in a rugby team on tour in Australia, and recurring stories told by jazz musicians.…
Comment on ‘softly constrained imagination’
Bildungsorganisationen als lose gekoppelte Systeme
Im Gegensatz zu dem vorherrschenden Bild, dass Elemente in Organisationen durch enge und dichte Verbindungen gekoppelt seien, wird hier vorgeschlagen, dass die Elemente oftmals in loser Weise verknüpft sind. Am einschlägigen Fall von Bildungsinstitutionen soll verdeutlicht werden, dass das Konzept der losen Kopplung eine überraschende Anzahl von disparaten Beobachtungen von Organisationen inkorporiert, neuartige Funktionen andeutet, widerspenstig…
Mindfulness and the Quality of Organizational Attention
Mindfulness as depicted by Levinthal and Rerup (2006) involves encoding ambiguous outcomes in ways that influence learning, and encoding stimuli in ways that match context with a repertoire of routines. We add to Levinthal and Rerup’s conjectures by examining Western and Eastern versions of mindfulness and how they function as a process of knowing an object. In our expanded view, encoding becomes less central. What becomes more central are activi…
Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking
Sensemaking involves turning circumstances into a situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard into action. In this paper we take the position that the concept of sensemaking fills important gaps in organizational theory. The seemingly transient nature of sensemaking belies its central role in the determination of human behavior, whether people are acting in formal organizations or elsewhere. Sensemaking is …
Normal Accident Theory As Frame, Link, and Provocation
In this article, the author offers suggestions as to why Normal Accidents, and the theory it formed, continues to provoke. By placing a meaningful frame around flows of events, normal accident theory allows people to better grasp and analyze the complexity of technological organizations as they face the unexpected
Organization as a Form of Life
Organizing and the Search for Excellence
This paper seeks to draw out commonalities between the organizational/practitioners' and academic agenda and to explore the idea that academe may not only reflect the times but also help to create them. In so doing, it examines the extent to which In Search of Excellence, a significant and timely exemplar of the organizational agenda, in effect operationalized The Social Psychology of Organizing. If, it concludes, sensemaking is retrospective, th…
Organizational Change and Development
Recent analyses of organizational change suggest a growing concern with the tempo of change, understood as the characteristic rate, rhythm, or pattern of work or activity. Episodic change is contrasted with continuous change on the basis of implied metaphors of organizing, analytic frameworks, ideal organizations, intervention theories, and roles for change agents. Episodic change follows the sequence unfreeze-transition-refreeze, whereas continu…
Introductory Essay—Improvisation as a Mindset for Organizational Analysis
The purpose of this essay is to improve the way we talk about organizational improvisation, using the vehicle of jazz improvisation as the source of orienting ideas. I start with two brief descriptions of the complexity involved when musicians compose in the moment. Then I review several definitions intended to capture holistically what is happening when people improvise. Next, I take a closer look at selected details in improvisation, namely, de…
Swift Trust and Temporary Groups
Sensemaking in organizations
The teaching of organization theory and the conduct of organizational research have been dominated by a focus on decision making and the conception of strategic rationality. The rational model, however, ignores the inherent complexity and ambiguity of real-world organizations and their environments. Karl Weick's new landmark volume, Sensemaking in Organizations, highlights how the "sensemaking" process - the creation of reality as an ongoing acco…
Loosely Coupled Systems
The Vulnerable System
The Tenerife air disaster, in which a KLM 747 and a Pan Am 747 collided with a loss of 583 lives, is examined as a prototype of system vulnerability to crisis. It is concluded that the combination of interruption of important routines among interdependent systems, interdependencies that become tighter, a loss of cognitive efficiency due to autonomic arousal, and a loss of communication accuracy due to increased hierarchical distortion, created a …
Social Behavior in Organizational Studies
Peer Reviewed
Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination
One-Way Transfers and Organizational Cohesion
(1989). One-Way Transfers and Organizational Cohesion. Annals of the International Communication Association: Vol. 12, Communication Yearbook 12, pp. 675-687
Organizational Culture as a Source of High Reliability
Organizations in which reliable performance is a more pressing issue than efficient performance often must learn to cope with incomprehensible technologies by means other than trial and error, since the cost of failure is too high. Discovery and consistent application of substitutes for trial and error—such as imagination, simulation, vicarious experience, and stories—contribute to heightened reliability. Organizational culture is integral to the…
Toward a Model of Organizations as Interpretation Systems
Small wins
Organizational Change and Development
Recent analyses of organizational change suggest a growing concern with the tempo of change, understood as the characteristic rate, rhythm, or pattern of work or activity. Episodic change is contrasted with continuous change on the basis of implied metaphors of organizing, analytic frameworks, ideal organizations, intervention theories, and roles for change agents. Episodic change follows the sequence unfreeze-transition-refreeze, whereas continu…
Organized sensemaking
The contributions to this special issue focus on links among sensemaking, organizing, and storytelling. They are re-examined in terms of to what the authors pay attention, with what, and for what. In pursuit of linkages, authors attend to accounts of consulting failure, hearings about the recent financial crisis, life history storytelling by elite actors, conflict in a rugby team on tour in Australia, and recurring stories told by jazz musicians.…
Middle range theories of social systems
The high abstractions found in social systems theory often defy falsification. As a result the stature of these abstractions is problematic. It is argued that several analytical biases provide false positive evidence supporting systems theory. False positives are likely when nouns exceed verbs in theoretical language, the analogy of thermostats is used indiscriminately, phenomenology of causation is ignored, need-specific interdependencies are ne…
The affective foundations of high-reliability organizing
The factors that compel individuals to exert the extraordinary effort needed to create high reliability—consistent error-free performance under trying conditions—remain unspecified. Here, we propose that when individuals experience emotional ambivalence and prosocial motivation, it induces the broad thinking and other-orientation that undergird mindful organizing and high reliability. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Fate of arbitrary traditions in a laboratory microculture
Reduction of cognitive dissonance through task enhancement and effort expenditure
The Effect of Composer Credibility on Orchestra Performance
Social Behavior in Organizational Studies
Peer Reviewed
Social psychology in an era of social change
Power in Organizations.Jeffrey Pfeffer
Discrepant Membership as an Occasion for Effective Cooperation
Reduction of cognitive dissonance through task enhancement and effort expenditure
When Prophecy Pales
This paper explored common objections to cognitive dissonance theory, propositions within the theory that have been neglected by critics, and issues within social psychology that have been sharpened by debate over dissonance theory. It is concluded that the theory elaborates one important class of quasi-logical constraints on thought processes, psychological implication, and that dissonance research is moving beyond demonstrations to more crucial…
Dissonance and the revision of choice criteria
Realignment of discrepant reinforcement value
Discrepant Membership as an Occasion for Effective Cooperation
Social psychology in an era of social change
The Twigging of Overload
Fate of arbitrary traditions in a laboratory microculture
Managerial Behavior, Performance, and Effectiveness
Influencing Attitudes and Changing Behavior
The Effect of Composer Credibility on Orchestra Performance
Middle range theories of social systems
The high abstractions found in social systems theory often defy falsification. As a result the stature of these abstractions is problematic. It is argued that several analytical biases provide false positive evidence supporting systems theory. False positives are likely when nouns exceed verbs in theoretical language, the analogy of thermostats is used indiscriminately, phenomenology of causation is ignored, need-specific interdependencies are ne…
Organizing an Anarchy
Power in Organizations.Jeffrey Pfeffer
Toward a Model of Organizations as Interpretation Systems
Small wins
Organizational Culture as a Source of High Reliability
Organizations in which reliable performance is a more pressing issue than efficient performance often must learn to cope with incomprehensible technologies by means other than trial and error, since the cost of failure is too high. Discovery and consistent application of substitutes for trial and error—such as imagination, simulation, vicarious experience, and stories—contribute to heightened reliability. Organizational culture is integral to the…
Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination
One-Way Transfers and Organizational Cohesion
(1989). One-Way Transfers and Organizational Cohesion. Annals of the International Communication Association: Vol. 12, Communication Yearbook 12, pp. 675-687
Loosely Coupled Systems
The Vulnerable System
The Tenerife air disaster, in which a KLM 747 and a Pan Am 747 collided with a loss of 583 lives, is examined as a prototype of system vulnerability to crisis. It is concluded that the combination of interruption of important routines among interdependent systems, interdependencies that become tighter, a loss of cognitive efficiency due to autonomic arousal, and a loss of communication accuracy due to increased hierarchical distortion, created a …
Social Behavior in Organizational Studies
Peer Reviewed
Sensemaking in organizations
The teaching of organization theory and the conduct of organizational research have been dominated by a focus on decision making and the conception of strategic rationality. The rational model, however, ignores the inherent complexity and ambiguity of real-world organizations and their environments. Karl Weick's new landmark volume, Sensemaking in Organizations, highlights how the "sensemaking" process - the creation of reality as an ongoing acco…
Swift Trust and Temporary Groups
Introductory Essay—Improvisation as a Mindset for Organizational Analysis
The purpose of this essay is to improve the way we talk about organizational improvisation, using the vehicle of jazz improvisation as the source of orienting ideas. I start with two brief descriptions of the complexity involved when musicians compose in the moment. Then I review several definitions intended to capture holistically what is happening when people improvise. Next, I take a closer look at selected details in improvisation, namely, de…
Psychology (24 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Political science (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works)