Karl E. Weick

Karl E. Weick (born October 31, 1936 in Warsaw, Indiana) is an American organizational theorist who is noted for introducing the notions of "loose coupling", "mindfulness", and "sensemaking" into organizational studies. He is a professor in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Key Contributions

Enactment

Karl Weick uses this term to denote the idea that certain phenomena (such as organizations) are created by being talked about.

"Managers construct, rearrange, single out, and demolish many 'objective' features of their surroundings. When people act they unrandomize variables, insert vestiges of orderliness, and literally create their own constraints." [Social Psychology of Organizing, p243]

Loose Coupling

Karl Weick's major contribution to the topic of loose coupling in an organizational context comes from his 1982 paper on "The Management of Change among Loosely Coupled Elements", which is reprinted in "Making Sense of the Organization".

Sensemaking

People try to make sense of organizations, and organizations themselves try to make sense of their environment. Weick pays attention to questions of ambiguity and uncertainty in this sense-making, which he calls equivocal.

Mindfulness

Karl Weick introduced the term mindfulness into the organizational and safety literatures in the article "Organizing for high reliability: Processes of collective mindfulness" (1999). Weick develops the term “mindfulness” from Langer's (1989) work, who uses it to describe individual cognition. Weick's innovation was transferring this concept into the organizational literature as “collective mindfulness.” The effective adoption of collective mindfulness characteristics by an organization appears to cultivate safer cultures that exhibit improved system outcomes. The term high reliability organization (HRO) is an emergent property described by Weick (and Roberts). Highly mindful organizations characteristically exhibit: a) Preoccupation with failure, b) Reluctance to simplify c) Sensitivity to operations, d) Commitment to Resilience, and e) Deference to Expertise.

Publications

;Books
* 1979, "The Social Psychology of Organizing", 2nd Ed. McGraw Hill.
* 1995, "Sensemaking in Organizations", Sage.
* 2001, "Making Sense of the Organization", Blackwell.
* 2001, "Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity". with co-author Kathleen Sutcliffe, Jossey-Bass.

;Articles
* 1984, with Richard L Dalf, "Toward a model of organizations as Interpretation systems". Academy of Management. "The Academy of Management Review" (pre-1986); 9; pg. 284; Apr 1984.
* 1988, "Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situation", in: "Journal of Management Studies". 25:4, pp. 305-317, July, 1988.
* 2005, with Kathleen M Sutcliffe and, David Obstfeld, "Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking", in: "Organization Science". Vol. 16, nº 4, p. 409-421, Jul/Aug, 2005.

External links

* [http://www.bus.umich.edu/Positive/POS-Research/Contributors/KarlWeick.htm Research Statement by Professor Weick]
* [http://www.bus.umich.edu/FacultyResearch/Research/TryingTimes/Rules.htm Leadership When Events Don't Play By the Rules] Short essay by Karl Weick
* [http://www.onepine.info/pweick.htm Karl Weick page] at OnePine
* [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.04/weick_pr.html Complicate Yourself] interview with Karl Weick in Wired, April 1996
* [http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bd597397/IS.html Information Systems Theory] page based on the work of Karl Weick, by some students at Ohio University.