Karl E Weick - Collected Quotes

"If all of the elements in a large system are loosely coupled to one another, then any one element can adjust to and modify a local a local unique contingency without affecting the whole system. These local adaptations can be swift, relatively economical, and substantial." (Karl E Weick, "Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems", 1976)

"There is no methodological process by which one can confirm the existence of an object independent of the confirmatory process involving oneself. The outside is a void, there is only the inside. A person's world, the inside or internal view is all that can be known. The rest can only be the object of speculation." (Karl E Weick, 1977)

"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. when 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, "Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems", 1976)

"Any approach to the study of organizations is built on specific assumptions about the nature of organizations and how they are designed and function." (Richard L Daft & Karl E Weick, "Toward a model of organizations as interpretation systems", Academy of Management Review Vol 9 (2), 1984)

"An ordered set of assertions about a generic behavior or structure assumed to hold throughout a significantly broad range of specific instances." (Karl E Weick, "Theory construction as disciplined imagination", 1989)

"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, "Sensemaking in Organizations", 1995)

"Sensemaking tends to be swift, which means we are more likely to see products than processes." (Karl E Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995)

"The point we want to make here is that sensemaking is about plausibility, coherence, and reasonableness. Sensemaking is about accounts that are socially acceptable and credible... It would be nice if these accounts were also accurate. But in an equivocal, postmodern world, infused with the politics of interpretation and conflicting interests and inhabited by people with multiple shifting identities, an obsession with accuracy seems fruitless, and not of much practical help, either." (Karl E Weick, "Sensemaking in Organizations", 1995)

"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, "Sensemaking in Organizations", 1995)

"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, "The collapse of sensemaking in organizations: The Mann Gulch disaster", Administrative Science Quarterly 3, 1993)