Karl Weick

about Karl Weick

about Karl Weick

key concepts

books

internet

Writer on organizations and sense-making. Champion of ambivalence and equivoque.

His outstanding 1982 paper on "The Management of Change among Loosely Coupled Elements" is reprinted in Making Sense of the
Organization.

Ambivalence

Bricolage

Enactment

Equivoque

Leadership

Loose Coupling

Naivety

Sense-Making

Karl Weick, Making Sense of the Organization. Basil Blackwell, 2001. Strongly recommended.

Weick Research Summary (Michigan Business School)

Karl Weick Page (OnePine)

Essay by Weick: Leadership When Events Don't Play by the Rules

Information Systems Theory (Some Students at Ohio University)

Life in Organisations: Sensemaking or Appreciation? A comparison of the works of Karl Weick and Sir Geoffrey Vickers, by Errol Smythe. Abstract (html) Paper (pdf)

Karl Weick on bricolage

veryard projects > people > karl weick > bricolage

Bricolage is a form of improvisation practised by some engineers, using whatever resources and repertoire come to hand, in order to perform the immediate task. A person who practises bricolage is called a bricoleur.

In a paper called Organizational Redesign as Improvisation (contained in Making Sense of the Organization), Karl Weick identifies the following requirements for successful bricolage.

intimate knowledge of resources

careful observation and listening

trusting one's ideas

self-correcting structures, with feedback

Karl Weick on enactment

veryard projects > people > karl weick > enactment

Karl Weick introduced 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." [Weick, Social Psychology of
Organizing, p243]

Karl Weick on the advantages of being naive

veryard projects > people > karl weick > naive

	Being naive simply means that we reject received wisdom that something is a problem. We are always naive relative to some definition of the situation, and if we try to become less so, we may accept a definition that confines the definition of small wins to narrower issues than is necessary.
	Being naive probably does have a grain of denial embedded in it. But denial can lower arousal to more optimal levels, so that more complex actions can be developed and more detailed analyses can be made.
	To be naive is to start with fewer preconceptions ...
	Naive beliefs favour optimism ...

source: Making Sense of the Organization, pp438-9

Naive Thinking

veryard projects > people > karl weick

	intimate knowledge of resources
	careful observation and listening
	trusting one's ideas
	self-correcting structures, with feedback