Making Sense of the Organization

by Weick, Karl E.

• ISBN13: 9780631223191
• ISBN10: 0631223193
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-11-08
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This volume brings together the best-known and most influential articles on sensemaking in organizations by one of its most distinguished exponents, Karl Weick. Brings together the best most influential articles written by one of the gurus of sensemaking - Karl Weick. Helps readers develop a thorough understanding of the sensemaking process - essential for effective management.

Author Biography

Karl E. Weick is the Rensis Likert College Professor of Organizational Behavior and Psychology and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He has written numerous books and articles, including Sensemaking in Organizations (1995), and The Social Psychology of Organizing (Second Edition 1980).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	ix
Part I Organizations as contexts for Sensemaking	1	(92)
Introduction	3	(2)
Sensemaking in Organizations: Small Structures with Large Consequences	5	(27)
Sources of Order in Underorganized Systems: themes in Recent Organizational Theory	32	(25)
Organizational Redesign as Improvisation	57	(36)
Part II Components of Sensemaking	93	(328)
Introduction	95	(2)
Ecological change	97	(3)
The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster	100	(25)
The Vulnerable System: An Analysis of the Tenerife Air Disaster	125	(23)
Technology as Equivoque: Sensemaking in New Technologies	148	(31)
Enactment	176	(3)
Enactment Processes in Organizations	179	(28)
Enactment and the Boundaryless Career: Organizing as We Work	207	(17)
Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situations	224	(17)
Selection	237	(4)
Toward a Model of Organizations as Interpretation Systems	241	(18)
Collective Mind in Organizations: Heedful Interrelating on flight Decks	259	(25)
Improvisations as a Mindset for Organizational analysis	284	(24)
Retention	305	(3)
Organizations as cognitive Maps: Charting Ways to Success and Failure	308	(22)
Organizational culture as a Source of High Reliability	330	(15)
Substitutes for Strategy	345	(16)
Remembering	356	(5)
The Attitude of Wisdom: Ambivalence as the Optimal Compromise	361	(19)
Management of Organizational Change Among Loosely Coupled Elements	380	(24)
Organization Design: Organizations as Self-Designing Systems	404	(17)
Part III Applications of Sensemaking	421	(52)
Introduction	423	(3)
Small wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems	426	(18)
Cosmos vs. chaos: Sense and Nonsense in electronic Contexts	444	(14)
Sensemaking as an Organizational Dimension of Global Change	458	(15)
Index	473