Chapter 19.pdf

Outline 

CHAPTER 19 

INFORMATION SYSTEMS 

APPROACH TO ORGANIZATIONS 

I. Introduction. 

A. Karl Weick focuses on the process of organizing rather than the structure of 

organizations. 

B. He equates organizing with information processing. 

C. His model of organizing describes how people make sense out of confusing verbal 

inputs. 

II. Organizing: making sense out of equivocal information. 

A. Uncertainty denotes a lack of information. 

B. Equivocality refers to situations where at least two interpretations are equally valid. 

C. When information is equivocal, people need a context or framework to help them 

sort through the data. 

D. Face-to-face interaction is crucial when an organization faces equivocal information. 

III. Sensemaking in a loosely coupled system. 

A. Universities are loosely coupled, which is to their advantage. 

B. Requisite variety is the degree of complexity and diversity an organization needs to 

match the level of equivocality of the data it processes. 

C. Since universities handle complex information they will fail at sensemaking unless 

they are loosely coupled. 

D. Weick prefers biological over mechanical models of organization. 

E. The basic unit of interconnectedness is the double interact. 

1. It consists of three elements—act, response, and adjustment. 

2. Its importance is why Weick focuses more on relationships within an 

organization than on an individual’s talent or performance. 

F. The university illustrates double interacts in a loosely coupled system. 

1. Individual departments and units on campus are not closely connected. 

2. Loose coupling allows the university to absorb shocks, scandals, and stupidity. 

IV. Organize to survive in a changing environment 

A. Weick applies Darwin’s survival-of-the-fittest theory to organizations. 

B. The ultimate goal of an organization is survival. 

C. Some people organize in a way better adapted to survive than do others. 

D. Unlike animals, organizations can change when their members alter their behavior. 

V. The three-stage process of social-cultural evolution. 

A. Social-cultural evolution is a three-stage process: enactment, selection, retention. 

B. Enactment: don’t just sit there; do something. 

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1. Organizations have open boundaries with the outside environment, which they 

partially create through their activity. 

2. The failure to act is the cause of most organizational ineffectiveness. 

3. Weick believes that action is a precondition for sensemaking. 

4. Language is action, which is why organizations need to have many meetings. 

C. Selection: retrospective sensemaking. 

1. Selection is aided by two tools—rules and cycles. 

2. Rules—stock responses that have served well in the past and have become 

standard operating procedure—are effective when equivocality is low, but fail to 

clarify situations when many conflicting interpretations are possible. 

3. The act-response-adjustment cycle of the double interact is more effective in 

situations of high equivocality. 

4. As cycles increase to handle complex data, reliance on rules decreases. 

5. Two studies confirm Weick’s hypotheses about rules and cycles. 

D. Retention: treat memory as a pest. 

1. Retention is the way organizations remember. 

2. Too much retention creates a network of rules that reduces the flexibility 

necessary to respond to complex information. 

3. However, some degree of collective memory is necessary to provide stability for 

the organization. 

4. Weick seeks an ongoing tension between stability and innovation—managers 

should not overemphasize past experience. 

5. Organizations fail because they lose flexibility by relying too much on the past. 

VI. Critique: the strengths and weaknesses of metaphor. 

A. Weick makes his theory interesting with provocative metaphors, vivid examples, and 

startling statements. 

B. His sociocultural application of Darwin’s theory shares the advantages and 

disadvantages of all metaphors. 

1. The metaphor vivifies and explains a difficult concept. 

2. Unfortunately, it becomes ideology if taken too far, justifying cutthroat capitalism 

or quashing all conflict. 

C. Some managers criticize Weick’s quick-draw managerial approach. 

D. Nonetheless, he defends the position that any strategic plan is better than inaction. 

Key Names and Terms 

Karl Weick 

A professor of organizational behavior and psychology at the University of Michigan and 

champion of the information systems approach to organizations. 

Organizing 

A way to make sense out of equivocal information. 

Uncertainty 

A lack of information that requires one to seek more facts. 

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Equivocality 

Situations where people face the choice of two or more alternative interpretations, each 

of which could reasonably account for what’s going on. 

Requisite Variety 

The degree of complexity and diversity an organization needs to match the level of 

ambiguity of the data it processes. 

Loose Coupling 

A characteristic of some systems in which causal inference is difficult because relations 

are mediated, intermittent, dampened, and delayed; typically, different parts of the 

system have a widespread yet marginal effect on each other. 

Tight Coupling 

An organizational system in which the feedback loops of the double interacts of one 

part of the system are tightly connected with those of other parts of the system. 

Double Interact 

A communication cycle that consists of act, response, and adjustment. 

Charles Darwin 

A nineteenth-century biologist whose theory of evolution serves as a metaphor for 

Weick’s systems approach to organizations. 

Enactment 

Proactive communication in which members of an organization invent their 

environment rather than merely discover it; action that is a precondition for 

sensemaking. 

Open-System Theory 

For organizations, the environment is as much an output as it is an input. 

Selection 

The interpretation of actions already taken; retrospective sensemaking. 

Rules 

Stock responses that have served well in the past and have become standard operating 

procedure. They are effective when equivocality is low. 

Cycles 

Double interacts best employed in situations of high equivocality. 

Retention 

The way organizations remember. 

Principal Changes 

Previously Chapter 18, this chapter has been edited for clarity and precision. In 

addition, the Second Look section has been updated. Otherwise, it remains essentially the 

same. 

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Suggestions for Discussion 

Weick’s theory as innovative and provocative 

When discussing Weick’s work with your class, it’s very important to emphasize the bold 

iconoclasm with which he writes about organizations. Weick’s unorthodox, revolutionary 

pronouncements and innovative, artful metaphors are as captivating as they are controversial. 

To reinforce this point, you may wish to read or summarize the delightful music analogy Weick 

marshals in his artful article, “Organizing Improvisation: 20 Years of Organizing,” which Griffin 

includes in his Second Look section. Share with your students his daring approach to 

improvising. Weick’s “Act, then think!” approach creates a wonderful counterpart to the 

methodic rationality of the functional perspective. If you teach these two chapters back to 

back, in fact, make the most of the differences. Integrative Essay Question #30, below, 

provides a vehicle for such comparisons. 

In an interview on Bravo’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” Mike Meyers describes how 

important it is to keep writing despite feeling uninspired or experiencing writer’s block. He 

states that it is better to write poorly and revise it later than to not write at all. He tells a story 

of Bill Murray’s writing days for the comedian Gilda Radnor. When uninspired moments arose, 

Bill would write his stuff and then write, “and then Gilda does something funny.” It strikes us 

that Mike’s comments mirror Weick’s “Act, then think!” 

Interpretivism in contrast to scientific certainty 

Integrative Essay Question #29 below seeks to explore the connection Griffin 

establishes between Weick’s approach to sensemaking and the basic tenets of information 

and uncertainty reduction theories. Like Shannon and Weaver and Berger, Weick is concerned 

with the ways in which people gather and process information in order to reduce 

uncertainty/equivocality. Unlike these more empirical researchers, though, Weick is less 

concerned with scientific precision. He avoids both the simple elegance of Shannon and 

Weaver’s model and the axiomatic rigor of Berger’s theory. In fact, Weick’s view of 

organizational communication is intentionally amorphous; by focusing on the act of organizing 

rather than the structure of organization, he leaves behind the concrete for the abstract. 

Weick’s belief in the efficacy of action demonstrates a Jamesian faith that transcends 

scientific certainty. There is a humanist’s flair to his work—characterized by a fondness for 

paradox, an urge to challenge intuition, to doubt, and to exercise skepticism, a willingness to 

forego certainty, and an interpretive agility—that distinguishes him from his more scientifically 

minded colleagues. 

In addition, his interest in the ongoing tension between stability and innovation gives 

his work a dialectical feel reminiscent of Baxter and Montgomery’s approach to interpersonal 

relationships (see Integrative Essay Question #32 below). It should not come as a surprise, 

thus, that in the concluding chapter of A First Look at Communication Theory, Griffin places 

Weick in the fourth category of his theoretical continuum, far to the right of Shannon and 

Weaver and Berger, who are firmly located in the first category. In the privacy of our own 

study—with only you watching—we might position Weick in the middle position of the 

continuum, but we entirely agree with Griffin that significant theoretical distance exists 

between Weick and the strict empirical camp. 

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Tightly and loosely coupled organizations 

In the textbook under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus, question #3 features an 

element of the systems approach that Griffin is not able to discuss in detail during the 

chapter—the tightly coupled organization. Essay Question #22 below, which further probes the 

potential advantages of tight coupling, may serve as a useful follow-up question in this 

discussion. It is important, it seems to us, for students to see that tight coupling can— 

depending on the particular features of the organization in question—be an invaluable 

structuring principle. For example, many organizations that specialize in routinized, yet 

intricately interrelated and highly time-sensitive transactions and procedures require the 

coordination created by tight coupling. 

Essay Question #21 below takes up the potential disadvantages of loose coupling. 

What happens, for example, when a university is criticized or threatened financially by an 

outside source such as a legislative body or governing board? Although the president of the 

institution will offer his or her official response, the school as a whole lacks the organizational 

coherence to respond with one voice and action. Thus, it may appear weak and ineffectual in 

the eyes of outsiders. This may be one reason many universities receive so much flak these 

days. A tightly coupled corporation, however, may be able to respond more decisively and 

uniformly to criticism from beyond its walls, thus giving the appearance of control, discipline, 

and direction. 

Connections to adaptive structuration 

Based on the layout of the textbook, it is likely that you will teach Poole’s adaptive 

structuration and Weick’s information systems theories back to back. We suggest you 

capitalize on the opportunity as the theories bear a considerable resemblance to each other. 

For both theorists, reality, whether in a small group or an organization, is a dynamic 

occurrence—people create reality as they experience it. To do so, people sometimes fall back 

into existing patterns and at other times they seem to “make it up as they go along.” Poole and 

Weick incorporate this changeability into their theories, and in doing so can explain either 

when things remain status quo or go in a new direction, a strength of each theory. You might 

want to discuss with your students other areas of overlap such as the enactment-selection- 

retention cycle’s link to the duality of structures. Finally, ask your students to speculate on 

what rules and resources help us to organize. Integrative essay question #33 below picks up 

on this theme. 

Weick in small businesses 

On occasion, we have encountered students who are frustrated with Weick’s 

counterintuitive claims based on either their own or their parents’ experience as a small 

business owner. We have found it very interesting to engage students in a discussion about 

what effects Weick’s suggestions would have on the local, family business. Does it make good, 

responsible business sense to do something and figure it out later? With the encroachment of 

big business and corporate establishment on Main Street America, would a failing 

businessperson do better by identifying options and weighing them carefully before acting or 

by making a bold, yet uncertain step forward? For Weick, these actions may not be 

contradictory as the assembling of new information and developing a plan of action serves to 

reduce uncertainty and equivocality. Taking no action and ignoring one’s eroding business is a 

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fatal flaw in organizations according to Weick, but is it fair to say that a business owner’s act 

may be to gather information upon which to get a response and to adjust? 

Continuing with the theme of small or local businesses, you may want to discuss with 

your students the comfort of familiarity. Weick argues that organizations would do better to 

shed the known in favor of the innovative (286), but for some businesses sameness may be its 

greatest asset. Like going into an old five-and-dime store that has everything or a restaurant 

that hasn’t updated the interior in 20 years, people are drawn to places that are “just like I 

remember it.” If there is a local establishment near your school that falls into this category, you 

might consider asking your students how Weick’s ideas about retention might alter this local 

institution. 

A trick question 

Essay Question #28 below may be a bit of a trick. The best answer to this either/or 

query is that it constitutes a false dilemma. As Griffin tells us, “Symbolic interaction is action. 

Whenever managers say something, they are actually creating a new environment rather than 

merely describing a situation” (284). Thus, the most successful response should begin by 

setting the questioner straight. 

Sample Application Log 

Brian 

Each person employed by media production services, myself included, is carefully trained on 

how to run sound in Edman Chapel. Often, we are given specific instructions about what 

microphones to set up where so that everything is set long before the client shows up. 

Sometimes when the client arrives they have changed their mind about how they want things 

set up. When the scenario is cut and dried as to what we can and cannot do, we tend to rely on 

past rules. More often than not, the situation requires a judgment call; in this case we look to 

the cycle of act-response-adjustment. As we talk further with a client about what they want, we 

reduce equivocality and are better able to adjust. However, I am often tempted to remember 

how I’ve seen my boss act in similar situations and construct a network of rules about how I 

should act. According to this theory, this means that I’ve lost some flexibility in dealing with 

problems and will not be able to adjust as quickly as I should. 

Exercises and Activities 

Retention and collective memory 

Weick suggests that managers should “treat memory as a pest” (286). To discuss this 

issue within the context of your university or college, ask students to come up with rules that 

your institution has adopted or tacitly practices for which no good reason can be found—either 

because none ever existed or because no one can remember the original rationale. On some 

campuses students might wonder why classroom desks are set (sometimes bolted to the floor) 

in rows when discussion is the major form of interaction; why people wear black robes, hoods, 

and funny hats to graduation and convocation; why first-year students are not allowed many of 

the freedoms given other students; why the regular school year lasts only nine months; why 

athletes are granted special privileges; why English composition is required, yet courses in 

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public speaking and listening are not; why many coaches are paid more than renowned 

professors; and why grades are so important. To be balanced, of course, it’s important to 

emphasize the counterpoint that some degree of collective memory is necessary to provide 

stability for the organization. Students should be able to provide examples of instances in 

which your institution calls upon retained knowledge to help itself respond intelligently to 

problems. The same line of inquiry can be conducted with respect to smaller organizations to 

which students belong such as sororities, fraternities, churches, and families. (Essay Question 

#27 below addresses the issue of retention.) 

The organizing of families 

It may be revealing, in fact, to ask your students to imagine parenting in terms of 

managing. How do double interacts function within the family structure? Is “Act, then think!” an 

appropriate guideline for parental decision making? Encourage them to draw on their own 

family experiences as they respond to such questions. 

Double interaction and connections to interactional view 

When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he uses Weick’s approach to analyze his own 

college. He asks students to discuss how buildings are named, how professors’ names are 

listed in the catalog, and so forth. He also makes a particular point of emphasizing—and 

exemplifying—the assumption that survival is a more important goal than the stated aims of an 

organization (282). He stresses that you absolutely must demonstrate the concept of the 

double interact for them, using an example of your own to reinforce the book’s treatment. 

Finally, he likes to use the interactional view as a way of characterizing the systematic 

approach championed by Weick. Just as family systems are comprised of intricately related 

individuals, so organizations are built of a network of relationships. In both contexts, one 

cannot understand a problem in isolation, but must look at the complex web of relations 

inherent in any situation. 

Pictionary ® , the Weick way 

Here’s an exercise from Carey H. Adams of Southwest Missouri State University that you 

may wish to try: 

How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What You Draw? 

An Experiential Game for Teaching Karl Weick’s Model of Organizational Sensemaking 

Learning Objective: To illustrate Karl Weick’s concepts of equivocality and the enactment- 

selection-retention process of equivocality reduction. 

Materials Needed: 25-30 drawing tasks, as in the game Pictionary ® 

Large drawing surface and writing utensils (e.g., whiteboard, flip chart) 

Paper and writing utensils for participants 

Group Size: 10-25 

Time Required: 45-60 minutes 

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Instructions 

Choose four people to serve as artists. These four artists will rotate drawing clues. Place 

remaining participants in groups of 3-4. Explain that participants will be playing a game similar 

to the popular Pictionary ® but with several modifications. The rules of the game are as follows: 

1. Each artist will be given a list of 8-10 drawing tasks. They will rotate drawing one picture 

at a time. Artists may choose to draw their tasks in any order, and artists may consult 

with one another. 

2. Artists will draw each picture in its entirety before players are allowed to guess aloud. 

When the artist is done, he or she sits down. 

3. After the artist sits down, participants may discuss the drawing and generate guesses. 

Note: Although participants are seated in groups of 3-4, no instructions are given 

regarding whether they are to play as teams or as an entire group. Participants may 

discuss the drawing any way they choose, but they may not communicate directly with 

the artist. 

4. Participants can generate as many guesses as they like, but final guesses are to be 

held until the end of the game (i.e., when time is called, participants will be asked to list 

all of their guesses at one time). 

5. Participants will indicate when they are finished discussing the drawing. At this point, 

the artist may choose to modify his or her drawing based upon the group’s discussion. 

The artist also may choose to leave the drawing as is. 

6. After the artist passes or makes modifications, participants may discuss the drawing 

one more time. At no time may the artist indicate in any way whether players have 

guessed correctly. 

7. Drawing rules: 

a. No talking by the artist. 

b. No nonverbal indicators by the artist (e.g., head nods, pointing, etc.). 

c. No letters or numbers allowed in drawings. 

d. The facilitator may disallow pictures for any rule violation. 

8. Announce a time limit for the game (typically 30-40 minutes). Note: It may take the 

group a few minutes to get into a rhythm, and enthusiasm will build as the game 

progresses. In this case, you may want to extend the time limit as the round nears 

completion. 

9. Announce that players will be rewarded according to the following formula: 

# answers x .5 x % correct answers = points 

Points may be extra credit, participation points, or some other reward. 

Ex: 24 answers x .5 x 75% correct = 8 points 

10. Players and artists can develop any strategy they choose within the rules of the game. 

Applications 

Drawings represent equivocality, i.e., inputs with multiple plausible meanings. 

Guessing is enactment, i.e., bringing inputs into the field of perception and 

interpretation; perceptions of drawings are shaped by initial and subsequent guesses. 

Processing of inputs leads to selection of relevant information. 

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Useful information is stored in retention for future guesses, e.g., players begin to 

recognize elements of artists’ drawing strategies; artists develop strategies they 

perceive as effective and use them repeatedly. 

Easy pictures are solved quickly using assembly rules, e.g., some pictures are easily 

recognizable; a familiar format is quickly recognized and used by players. 

Players engage in communication cycles when sufficient assembly rules are not 

available and/or inputs are highly equivocal, e.g., discussion is more extensive, more 

guesses are generated, or more disagreement over guesses is expressed. 

The entire game demonstrates the reduction of equivocality. 

o Players enact their environment by choosing strategies and establishing game 

procedures. 

o Players must find a way of retaining rules and information for use in making final 

guesses. 

Artists also are reducing equivocality. 

o Drawing is enactment. 

o Recognizing what clues are understood is enactment. 

o Retaining what has worked and using it again or building on it is retention. 

Some words and pictures are more equivocal than others, i.e., they present a greater 

number of equally acceptable interpretations or meanings. 

Discussion Questions for Debriefing 

How did the absence of feedback affect you? 

Did you choose speed or accuracy as a strategy to gain the most points? How did you 

arrive at that choice? How did that choice affect the way you approached the game? 

Did artists’ second attempts tend to increase or decrease equivocality? Why? 

What system did players devise to deal with equivocality? 

(If the facilitator told players the categories for drawings, e.g., place, person, action) Did 

telling you the drawing category always help reduce equivocality? Why or why not? 

What strategies were retained? Why? 

If you could play the game again, what would you do differently? 

Did the group ever talk itself out of right answers? How did that happen? Did more talk 

create more equivocality? 

Did assembly rules always work? Did they sometimes cause more confusion than they 

relieved because they didn’t seem to fit the drawing? For example, artists often will use 

the “sounds like” symbol of an ear, but a difficult “sounds like” clue may distract 

players from a more straightforward visual clue. 

Was there enough participation among players? 

Did artists’ adding to their drawings sometimes create more equivocality than it 

reduced? 

What kinds of feedback did players and artists use? 

What effect did being seated in groups have on players? Did they assume they were in 

competitive teams? Did they ignore the fact that they were in “groups”? Did players 

discuss why they were in groups? 

What was the most equivocal drawing? What made it equivocal? 

How did artists choose clues to draw? Did they change their strategies as the game 

progressed? 

To what extent did players rely on assembly rules vs. communication cycles? Why? 

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Further Resources 

For recent writings by Weick, see: 

o Weick discusses idea generation in his article, “Mundane Poetics: Searching for 

Wisdom in Organizational Studies,” Organizational Studies 25, 4 (2004): 653- 

68. 

o In his article for the special issue of British Journal of Managament on new 

directions in organizational learning, Weick discusses the imagination and its 

role in learning, “Puzzles in Organizational Learning: An Exercise in Disciplined 

Imagination,” British Journal of Management 13 (2002): S7-S15. 

o In their 2001 book, Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an 

Age of Complexity (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass), Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe 

examine how high reliability organizations such as aircraft carriers and 

firefighting crews organize themselves in such a way as to manage the 

unexpected. 

o Weick offers a characteristically innovative, articulate critique of current 

organizational studies in “Drop Your Tools: An Allegory for Organizational 

Studies,” Administrative Science Quarterly 41 (1996): 301-13. 

Fredric M. Jablin and Michael W. Kramer offer a recent application of sensemaking in 

“Communication-Related Sense-Making and Adjustment during Job Transfers,” 

Management Communication Quarterly 12 (November 1998): 155-82. 

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Sample Examination Questions 

Sample Questions are not reproduced in the online version of the Instructor's Manual. 

To receive a copy of the Test Bank contact your local McGraw-Hill sales representative or email 

Leslie Oberhuber, Senior Marketing Manager at leslie_oberhuber@mcgraw-hill.com 

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