Description
Book SynopsisMaking Sense of the Organization elaborates on the influential idea that organizations are interpretation systems that scan, interpret, and learn. These selected essays represent a new approach to the way managers learn and act in response to their environment and the way organizational change evolves.
Table of ContentsPreface vii
Acknowledgments ix
Part I Introduction 1
1. Organized Impermanence: An Overview 3
2. Mundane Poetics: Searching for Wisdom in Organizational Theory 9
3. Faith, Evidence, and Action: Better Guesses in an Unknowable World 27
Part II Attending 45
4. Managing the Unexpected: Complexity as Distributed Sensemaking 47
5. Information Overload Revisited 65
Kathleen M. Sutcliffe and Karl. E Weick
6. Organizing for Mindfulness: Eastern Wisdom and Western Knowledge 85
Karl E. Weick and Ted Putnam
Part III Interpretation 107
7. Making Sense of Blurred Images: Mindful Organizing in Mission STS-107 109
8. Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking 129
Karl E. Weick, Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, and David Obstfeld
9. Impermanent Systems and Medical Errors: Variety Mitigates Adversity 153
Part IV Action 173
10. Hospitals as Cultures of Entrapment: A Re-analysis of the Bristol Royal Infirmary 175
Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe
11. Enacting an Environment: The Infrastructure of Organizing 189
12. Positive Organizing and Organizational Tragedy 207
Part V Learning and Change 223
13. Emergent Change as a Universal in Organizations 225
14. Drop Your Tools: An Allegory for Organizational Studies 243
15. Leadership as the Legitimation of Doubt 261
Epilogue 273
References 275
Index 281
