Karl E. Weick: Quotes about reason

Karl E. Weick is Organisational psychologist. Explore interesting quotes on sense.
Karl E. Weick: 60   quotes 2   likes

“The organism or group enacts equivocal raw talk, the talk is viewed retrospectively, sense is made of it, and then this sense is stored as knowledge in the retention process. The aim of each process has been to reduce equivocality and to get some idea of what has occurred.”

Karl E. Weick

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 133-134

Idea , Knowledge , Sense

“Sensemaking is about the enlargement of small cues. It is a search for contexts within which small details fit together and make sense. It is people interacting to flesh out hunches. It is a continuous alternation between particulars and explanations with each cycle giving added form and substance to the other.”

Karl E. Weick

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 133

People , Search , Sense

“The basic idea of sensemaking is that reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs.”

Karl E. Weick

Weick (1993, p. 635), as cited in: Bruce K. Berger, ‎Juan Meng (2014), Public Relations Leaders as Sensemakers, p. 7
1980s-1990s

Idea , Reality , Sense , Effort

“Action often creates the orderly relations that originally were mere presumptions summarized in a cause map. Thus language trappings of organizations such as strategic plans are important components in the process of creating order. They hold events together long enough and tightly enough in people's heads so that they act in the belief that their actions will be influential and make sense.”

Karl E. Weick

Weick, Karl E. Organizational culture as a source of high reliability. National Emergency Training Center, 1987. p. 98
1980s-1990s

People , Sense

“That’s what this entire book is about. The basic recipe coordinates with organizing in the way outlined in Figure 5.3 (saying = enactment, selection = seeing what I say, retention = knowledge of what I said). The organism or group enacts equivocal raw talk, the talk is viewed retrospectively, sense is made of it, and this sense is then stored as knowledge in the retention process. The aim of each process has been to reduce equivocality and to get some idea of what has occurred.”

Karl E. Weick

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 133-134, as cited in: Magala (1997, p. 321)

Books , Way , Idea , Knowledge

“To talk about sensemaking is to talk about reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves and their creations. There is a strong reflexive quality to this process. People make sense of things by seeing a world on which they already imposed what they believe. In other words, people discover their own inventions. This is why sensemaking can be understood as invention and interpretations understood as discovery. These are complementary ideas. If sensemaking is viewed as an act of invention, then it is also possible to argue that the artifacts it produces include language games and texts.”

Karl E. Weick

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 15

People , World , Game , Idea

“In a loosely coupled system there is more room available for self-determination by the actors. If it is argued that a sense of efficacy is crucial for human beings. ihen a sense of efficacy might be greater in a loosely coupled system with autonomous units than it would be in a tightly coupled system where discretion is limited.”

Karl E. Weick

Source: 1970s, "Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems," 1976, p. 8

Sense

“Roethlisberger argues that people who are preoccupied with success ask the wrong question. They ask, “what is the secret of success” when they should be asking, “what prevents me from learning here and now?” To be overly preoccupied with the future is to be inattentive toward the present where learning and growth take place. To walk around asking, “am I a success or a failure” is a silly question in the sense that the closest you can come to answer is to say, everyone is both a success and a failure.”

Karl E. Weick

Weick, Karl E. "How Projects Lose Meaning: The Dynamics of Renewal." in Renewing Research Practice by R. Stablein and P. Frost (Eds.). Stanford, CA: Stanford. 2004; cited in: Bob Sutton " Karl Weick On Why "Am I a Success or a Failure?" Is The Wrong Question http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/04/karl-weick-on-w.html," at bobsutton.typepad.com, April 12, 2008.
2000s

People , Secret , Failure , Question

“When people perform an organized action sequence and are interrupted, they try to make sense of it. The longer they search, the higher the arousal, and the stronger the emotion. If the interruption slows the accomplishment of an organized sequence, people are likely to experience anger. If the interruption has accelerated accomplishment, then they are likely to experience pleasure. If people find that the interruption can be circumvented, they experience relief. If they find that the interruption has thwarted a higher level plan, then anger is likely to turn into rage, and if they find that the interruption has thwarted a minor behavioural sequence, they are likely to feel irritated.”

Karl E. Weick

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 48-49, as cited in: Magala, Slawomir J. " Book Review Essay: Karl E. Weick: Sensemaking in Organizations 1995, London: Sage. 231 pages. http://www.sagepub.com/mcdonaldizationstudy5/articles/Book%20Reviews_Articles%20PDFs/Magala.pdf," Organization studies 18.2 (1997): p. 324.

People , Pleasure , Feeling , Search