Karl E. Weick’s research while affiliated with University of Michigan and other places

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Publications (100)


Mental Models of High Reliability Systems
  • Article

June 1989

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25 Reads

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59 Citations

Organization & Environment

Karl E. Weick

Reliable performance in complex systems is determined in part by the ade quacy with which mental models of the system capture accurately the dimen sions of system coupling and system complexity. Failure to register coupling and complexity leads the observer to intervene into an imagined technology that does not exist and to convert opportunities for error into actual errors. To decrease the frequency with which this conversion occurs, people can make their models more complex or the systems they monitor less complex. Neither type of change is as daunting as it may appear, and this is illustrated by an analysis of the mental model and system design associated with the invasion of Grenada. Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68652/2/10.1177_108602668900300203.pdf


Can Information Loss Be ReversedEvidence for Serial Reconstruction

February 1989

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6 Reads

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7 Citations

Communication Research

As people transmit information through a communication chain, they drop details, add interpretations, and alter implications. To answer the question, are these losses and alterations reversible, subjects completed a serial reproduction task and then sent the simplified result through the system a second time to see if the lost features would be regained. Subjects restored the edited material, and their reconstruction closely approximated the original input. Implications for uncertainty absorption, organizational learning, adaptability, and information processing are discussed.




Enacted Sense-Making in Crisis Situations

July 1988

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442 Reads

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2,086 Citations

Journal of Management Studies

Sensemaking in crisis conditions is made more difficult because action that is instrumental to understanding the crisis often intensifies the crisis. This dilemma is interpreted from the perspective that people enact the environments which constrain them. It is argued that commitment, capacity, and expectations affect sensemaking during crisis and the severity of the crisis itself. It is proposed that the core concepts of enactment may comprise an ideology that reduces the likelihood of crisis.




Organizational Culture as a Source Of High Reliability

January 1987

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250 Reads

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1,302 Citations

California Management Review

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 creation of effective substitutes. Using examples taken from air traffic control, nuclear power generation, and naval carrier operations, this article demonstrates that closer attention to the ways people construct meaning can suggest new ways to improve reliability.


Argument and Narration in Organizational Communication

June 1986

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167 Reads

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293 Citations

Journal of Management

This review highlights the relevance of argumentation and narration for organizational communication, which is the exchange of information among organizational participants from which meaning is inferred. The links between argument and organizational rationality and between the narrative paradigm and organizational storytelling are discussed. Organizational and communication variables are viewed as mutually relevant. As the mixtures of argumentation and narration change, interaction changes, and different organizational structures are created. These processes have implications for both scholars and practicing managers.


Managing the unexpected: Assuring high performance in an age of complexity. University of Michigan business school management series.

363 Reads

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839 Citations

One of the great challenges any business or organization can face is how to deal with the unexpected. While traditional managerial practices such as planning are designed to manage unexpected threats, they often make things worse. How do you organize for high performance in a setting where the potential for error and disaster is overwhelming? In this book, the authors look to high reliability organizations (HROs)—aircraft carriers, nuclear power plants, firefighting crews, and others—for the answer. HROs have developed ways of acting that provide a template for all organizations that want to be more reliable in managing the unexpected. This book shows executives and upper level managers how to manage under trying conditions. The authors reveal how HROs create a collective state of mindfulness that produces an enhanced ability to discover and correct errors before they escalate into a crisis. Through a discussion of this principle and the practices that can be used to apply it, the authors show how to anticipate and respond to threats with flexibility rather than rigidity. Their practical, solutions-oriented approach includes numerous case studies demonstrating "mindful" practices and enables readers to assess and implement mindfulness in their own organizations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)


Citations (90)


... To move from fragments of experience to collective understandings (Rerup, Gioia, and Corley, 2022), actors must produce valid inferences, which emerge through a process of inquiry whereby they develop and discover plausible explanations of how cues fit into their environment, and test them (Christianson, 2019;Golden-Biddle, 2020;Weick, 2024). Standard learning theory assumes that actors develop valid understanding from a sample of data by aggregating similar experiences (Argote and Miron-Spektor, 2011;Maslach et al., 2018). ...

Reference:

The Dynamics of Inferential Interpretation in Experiential Learning: Deciphering Hidden Goals from Ambiguous Experience
Mann Gulch Revisited: Improvisation as a Surface of Apprehension
  • Citing Article
  • March 2024

Academy of Management Discoveries

... While development of trust in the longer term is rightly seen as an important element to successful HRTs in many contexts, changes in trust could be particularly problematic in teams that have formed on an ad hoc basis [23]. This might occur quite often in emergency scenarios where team members may not have previously worked together, where a certain degree of 'swift trust' will need to be assumed to give team members the necessary confidence in each other to cooperate [17]. Much research on HRT trust has also been focused on agent dyads (a human trustor and a robot trustee), with relatively little work done on real experiments with multiple, mobile robots. ...

Swift Trust and Temporary Groups
  • Citing Chapter
  • November 2006

... A prática de construção de estratégias, ou seja, o movimento durante a prática, entendido como strategizing, coloca um novo enfoque na estratégia, havendo a necessidade da construção e produção do seu significado (Whittington, 2006). O sensemaking, considerado o processo de criação de sentido, que ocorre durante as ações estratégicas, caracteriza a construção de significado nas organizações de forma coletiva, transcendendo à dimensão intrassubjetiva e assumindo uma dimensão intersubjetiva (Weick, 1973(Weick, , 2022. Dessa forma, o sensemaking exige dos estrategistas a capacidade de se comunicarem e tentarem influenciar na elaboração desse sentido, que é o objetivo do sensegiving (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). ...

Arrested Sensemaking: Typified Suppositions Sink the El Faro
  • Citing Article
  • Full-text available
  • October 2022

Organization Theory

... This research employs an interpretive approach, adopting a "practical orientation" that focuses on "how people manage their practical affairs in daily life, or how they get things done" (Neuman, 2014). The aim is to understand how individuals create and maintain their social world, aligned with the concept of organizing (Weick et al., 2005), which demonstrates the dynamism of organizations in interpreting and shaping their environment. This approach enables researchers to comprehend the process by which companies perceive and implement reclamation of ex-mining land. ...

Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking
  • Citing Chapter
  • December 2014

... The sense-making theory assumes unusual events (e.g., change initiatives) lead to task uncertainty and lead employees to search for feedback and cues from their environments to reconstruct the predictability of work procedures. If they receive feedback and cues signaling the existence of a conducive organizational climate, they tend to respond positively (Weick, 2021). This means that employees tend to respond positively to change initiatives in an organizational climate that enables employees to take the initiative when necessary and feel psychologically safe to criticize change attempts (Cristofaro, 2022). ...

Sensemaking and Whistleblowing

... Given the wealth and plurality of pragmatist approaches (Parmar, Phillips, & Freeman, 2016, p. 200) and Weick's attempts to create a 'mosaic' (Weick, 2020(Weick, , p. 1421) from a range of philosophies, his adoption of pragmatism is necessarily selective. 2 However, investigating what Weick takes from pragmatist philosophy may help us become aware of, and comprehend, some of the foundational assumptions of sensemaking theory, better enabling us to contrast these with alternative assumptions that could allow us to develop different and ultimately richer conceptualizations. ...

Sensemaking, Organizing, and Surpassing: A Handoff
  • Citing Article
  • August 2020

Journal of Management Studies

... All include a variant of the principle of knowledgeability, such as, for example, the notion of shared practical understanding (Schatzki, 2001), habitus (Bourdieu, 1990), or practical consciousness (Giddens, 1984), to name a few. Closer to organization studies, Weick (2017) would call this "mindfulness" while Le Baron et al. (2016) propose the notion of "mutual intelligibility" and Sandberg et al. (2017) suggest the idea of paying attention to actors' "skillful" performance. All of these conceptualizations, one way or another, invite us to see strategy (as well as any other type of managerial and organizational work) as an ongoing social accomplishment informed by actors' practical knowledge within the specific context in which it is embedded. ...

Commentary on ‘Mindfulness in Action’: Original Article
  • Citing Article
  • September 2017

Academy of Management Discoveries

... March and Simon (1958) brought the discussion and study of organisations into the academic arena. They illustrated the nature of the "limits of rationality" at the limits of individuals constrained by the elements of the situation that are not included in the rational calculations supporting the strategic factors (Weick, 2019(Weick, , p. 1531). Hedström and Swedberg (1998) see March and Simon's (1958) present rational constraints in decisionmaking as an example of theorising with social mechanisms. ...

Evolving Reactions: 60 Years with March and Simon's “Organizations”
  • Citing Article
  • July 2017

Journal of Management Studies

... Decision-making is incidental; sensemaking is paramount. To focus on decision is to miss most of what it means to reduce uncertainty and most of the ways emergent organizing attempts this reduction," Karl Weick (55). ...

Perspective Construction in Organizational Behavior
  • Citing Article
  • April 2017

Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior

... Los individuos experimentan sentimientos, pensamientos y recuerdos, los cuales pueden ser dolorosos, exitosos, intensos, entre otros. La tendencia innata de evitar experiencias dolorosas y repetir las intensas, puede generar dependencia al camino (Cameron 1994;Cameron et al. 1987;Morseletto 2023;Staw et al. 1981;Weick 1993;Weick & Sutcliffe 2000) y distracción en la identificación de oportunidades (Marín et al. 2010;Morseletto 2023). En este orden de ideas, la historia de vida posee gran influencia al tomar decisiones . ...

High reliability: The power of mindfulness
  • Citing Article
  • January 2000

Leader to Leader