"Making 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. Readers of this volume will find a wealth of examples and insights which go well beyond thinking and cognition to explain action. The author's ideas are at the forefront of our thinking on leadership, teams, and the management of change. 'This book engages the puzzle of impermanence in organizing. Through rich examples, evocative language, artful literature citing, and imaginative connecting, Weick re-introduces core ideas and themes around attending, interpreting, acting and learning to unlock new insights about impermanent organizing. The wisdom in this book is timeless and timely. It prods scholars and managers of organizations to complicate their views of organizing in ways that enrich thought and action' - Jane E. Dutton, Robert L. Kahn. Distinguished University Professor, University of Michigan. 
                 
            
            
            
            
                
                    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 
Pt. II  Attending  45 
4  Managing the Unexpected: Complexity as Distributed Sensemaking  47 
5  Information Overload Revisited by Kathleen M. Sutcliffe and Karl E. Weick  65 
6  Organizing for Mindfulness: Eastern Wisdom and Western Knowledge by Karl E. Weick and Ted Putnam  85 
Pt. III  Interpretation  107 
7  Making Sense of Blurred Images: Mindful Organizing in Mission STS-107  109 
8  Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking by Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe and David Obstfeld  129 
9  Impermanent Systems and Medical Errors: Variety Mitigates Adversity  153 
Pt. IV  Action  173 
10  Hospitals as Cultures of Entrapment: A Re-analysis of the Bristol Royal Infirmary by Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe  175 
11  Enacting an Environment: The Infrastructure of Organizing  189 
12  Positive Organizing and Organizational Tragedy  207 
Pt. 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  2