The social psychology of organizing

Abstract

In the first chapter, Weick introduces the concept of retrospective sensemaking, enactment, vicious circles, equivocality, memory, causal chains and openness which underpin the rest of the book. The second part of the chapter is devoted to discussion of structure, zone of indifference, bounded rationality vs. garbage can models of organisations. Chapter 2 examines ways to think about organisations. Weick cautions researchers to know what they are doing: because organisations are complex and multifaced, they change according to the way they are examined, and organisation scholars need to be aware of that. Similarly, they should acknowledge tradeoffs, as not theory can be general, accurate and simple at the same time. Because organisations are living entities, scholars should be think "ing", i.e. consider the processes more than the static considerations. Metaphors should be used to grasp deeper meanings. The goal is to arrive at interesting theories, and to evoke minitheories, that can then be proven or disproven. Chapter 6 examines enactment more in depth. The basic idea is that experience needs to be acted upon for it to acquire any meaning; experience is chaotic and equivocal, and differs among people exposed to the same external stimuli. Enacting is basically a bracketing activity, separating specific stimuli from the stream of activities, towards the construction of a schema of reality. Enactment can often be deviation amplifying, as well as a self-fulfilling prophecy; it often implies the social construction of reality, as people think through talking.