Karl E. Weick

Karl Edward Weick (born October 31, 1936 in Warsaw , Indiana ) is Professor Emeritus of Organizational Behavior and Psychology at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan . He is considered one of the most renowned organizational researchers in the world.

Life

From 1954 Weick studied at Wittenberg University ( Springfield , Ohio ), where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1958. In 1960 he received his master's degree in psychology from Ohio State University and in 1962 he successfully completed his Ph.D. in psychology from the same university.

After completing his studies, Weick took on an assistant position at Purdue University in Lafayette , Indiana (1962–1965). A number of visiting professorships followed, including one year in Utrecht ( Netherlands ), Minneapolis , Stanford University , Cornell University ( Ithaca , New York ), where he was finally given a full professorship. Finally, Weick taught for another year at Seattle University and the University of Texas until he finally took over the Rensis Likert Collegiate Professorship of Organizational Behavior and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan in 1988 , where he taught until his retirement.

Weick married Karen Lee Eickhoff in 1957 while still a student. The marriage has three sons, Kirk, Kyle and Kris.

Summary of Weick's work

Theoretical considerations

Weick takes an activity-oriented perspective, for example, prefers to manage (verb) over management (noun) and organize (verb) over organization (noun) in order to anchor the activity in thinking.

Weick regarded organizations as sinngenerierende systems (Engl. Sense making system ) that recreate their sense of self, looking back constantly with them and observe their environment themselves. Members of organizations confirm the result of this generation to themselves and other members and thus generate ( enactment ) their respective version of truth, correctness and the corresponding behavior (see corporate culture ). Weick understands sensemaking to be much more than mere interpretation . Sensemaking creates its own social reality.

" People
know what they think when they see what they say people know what they think when they see what they say "

- Karl E. Weick

Meaning generation always takes place in retrospect, as the incessant weaving of meaning from belief, unspoken assumptions, narratives, unspoken rules for decision-making and the resulting options for action. Once put into words, the content changes again because words are only incomplete containers for meaning and the meaning-generating process is steered in a different direction via the words. In addition, sense is changed even further via selective perception, where individual parts of reality are perceived differently (or not at all).

In such a fluid world, determinations have to be justified again and again. An endless stream of meaningful reasoning emerges, most obviously during sessions that Weick views as meaningful opportunities. Only those who appear for the session can follow the complex sense created. Weick names seven characteristic features for the generation of meaning in organizations. Making sense

1. is based on the construction of the self , because the self-perception is constantly being regenerated.
2. is retrospective (looking back), a never-ending process of coming to terms with the past from a continuous flow of perceptions
3. produces an expedient environment because people create the meaning of their own world. By doing this, they are also creating part of this world at the same time, thus producing recursive reality - until the world “makes sense”. It is plausible important than accuracy, "overlooked" so contradictory facts or explained away.
4. is social because it arises from the interactions of the people in an organization
5. is continuous as it never begins or ends, always in flux
6. focuses on clues and is generated from clues, i.e. This means that familiar reference points are used. Control over these reference points is a source of power because the meaningfulness of others depends on the reference points.
7. is driven more by plausibility than accuracy , as people act on what seems plausible to them, regardless of whether it can be measured.

Weick describes these processes again and again using examples from reality, be it Scottish producers of woolen clothing, the poisonous catastrophe at the Union Carbide plant in Bhophal , India or the death of a fire-fighting team in Mann Gulch , Montana .

After preliminary work by James G. March and others, Weick introduced the concept of the coupling between organizational elements into organizational theory. Some elements of organizations are tightly coupled, others loosely. Closely coupled organizations are only slightly influenced by their observed environment, as their high degree of structure means that they only process certain information from the environment. Weick cites Weber's ideal administration as an example of a closely linked organization . Loosely coupled organizations are far more sensitive to changes in their environment, but they have the problem that individual parts of the organization can only influence other areas within the system with difficulty. What all organizations have in common is the handling of insecure, inconsistent and changing information. Despite the facade of rationality, organizations are in a permanent process of subjectivity, imagination and randomness.

Practical advice

Weick gives managers ten pieces of advice on how to manage better in light of the above.

1. Don't panic when faced with clutter - it is better to allow some clutter and absorb the information rather than filtering it out and overlooking it.
2. Nothing can ever be fully done - everything you do has effects beyond the intended ones , including indirect and slow effects.
3. Chaotic activity is better than ordinary inactivity - meaning generation arises from activity, so no activity does not generate much meaning.
4. The most important decision is often the most inconspicuous - decision about what is worth preserving in folders, files or wherever is the basis for future activities. Such decisions seem unimportant, but they are given a past from which we construct the present and the future.
5. There is no solution - there are no easy answers, hardly anything is right or wrong. Learn to improvise and maintain a tolerable level of common sense.
6. Avoid utility thinking - good adaptation in today reduces options for the future. The strong focus on benefits in the now can make future benefits completely impossible. It is better to keep some clutter in the system and have options for the future.
7. The map is the country - when managers analyze the past, they create an experience map. If you project this map onto the future, no matter how much the map simplifies the truth, then it is a guideline that has been thought through several times and thus becomes the best available guide.
8. Reschedule the Organization Chart - Don't get caught up in the conventional representation of the organization. Rephrase, rewrite, and replace, for example, the titles with the effect they have on you.
9. Visualize your organization as an evolutionary system - see what is evolving, what you can do, and what could be done. Also, consider what cannot and cannot be done.
10. Make yourself complicated - think about different causes, alternative solutions, new situations, more complicated solutions and enjoy!

Allegations of plagiarism

In several articles, Weick draws on a story originally told by the Hungarian Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Györgyi and which appeared in a poem by the Czech poet Miroslav Holub in the literary supplement of the Times. Weick published the poem with some superficial differences, sometimes without citing a source, sometimes with the mention of Szent-Györgyi or Holub but without the explanation that it is an essentially literal copy. The plagiarism was discussed in an article by Thomas Basbøll and Henrik Graham. In a reply, Weick denied plagiarism, claiming "when I began to see the story as an example of cognitive effects, I had long since lost the original article containing Holub's poem and I didn't even know where I had read the story. .. I reconstructed the story to the best of my ability. " This does not explain why the reconstruction came so close to Holub's original. In the words of Basbøll and Graham, "The American Historical Association fully recognizes the existence of this customary defense in some plagiarism cases , and notes briefly that it is" understandable only in the context of a wider tolerance of inferior work. "

Works

Two of his books are also available in German:

• The process of organizing . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-06039-2 (also as paperback edition, 1995; title of the English original: The Social Psychology of Organizing )
• with Kathleen M. Sutcliffe: Managing the unexpected. How companies learn from extreme situations . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-608-94238-6 .

credentials

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Derek S. Pugh , David J. Hickson : Writers on Organizations. 5th edition. Penguin Books, London 1996, ISBN 0-14-025023-9 , pp. 124-129.
2. ^ Karl E. Weick: Sensemaking in Organizations. Foundations for Organizational Science, Sage Publications, London 1995, ISBN 0-8039-7177-X .
3. ^ Karl E. Weick: The collapse of sensemaking in organizations: The Mann Gulch disaster. In: Administrative Science Quarterly. Dec 1993; 38, 4; ABI / INFORM Global, p. 628 (online)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ Weick himself cites the neurologist Robert B. Glassman as the source of the idea : Persistence and loose coupling in living systems. In: Behavioral Science. 18: 83-98 (1973). This in turn relies on W. Ross Ashby's theoretical preliminary work.
5. ↑ ^{a b} T. Basbøll, H. Graham: Substitutes for Strategy Research: Notes on the source of Karl Weick's anecdote of the young lieutenant and the map of the Pyrenees. (2006; PDF; 121 kB) In: Ephemera. 6 (2), pp. 194-204.
6. ^ Karl E. Weick: Dear Editor: A Reply to Basbøll and Graham. (2006; PDF; 26 kB) In: Ephemera. 6 (2), p. 193. verbatim: "By the time I began to see the Alps story as an example of cognition in the path of the action, I had lost the original article containing Holub's poem and I was not even sure where I had read the story ... I reconstructed the story as best I could. "

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl E. Weick in the catalog of the German National Library
• Karl E. Weick at the University of Michigan, with CV (English)