On the way to Ithaka[1]: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Publication of Karl E. Weick’s The Social Psychology of Organizing

• Author: Gerardo Patriotta,Haridimos Tsoukas,Sally Maitlis,Kathleen M. Sutcliffe
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12616
• Published date: 01 November 2020

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Management Studies published by Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

On the way to Ithaka[1]: Commemorating the 50th

Anniversary of the Publication of Karl E. Weick’s

The Social Psychology of Organizing

Haridimos Tsoukasa,b, Gerardo Patriottab,

Kathleen M. Sutcliffec and Sally Maitlisd

aUniversity of Cyprus; bWarwick Business School; cJohns Hopkins University; dUniversity of Oxford

ABSTRACT Karl E. Weick’s The Social Psychology of Organizing has been one of the most influen-

tial books in organization studies, providing the theoretical underpinnings of several research

programs. Importantly, the book is widely credited with initiating the process turn in the field,

leading to the ‘gerundizing’ of management and organization studies: the persistent effort to

understand organizational phenomena as ongoing accomplishments. The emphasis of the book

on organizing (rather than on organizations) and its links with sensemaking have made it the

most influential treatise on organizational epistemology. In this introduction, we review Weick’s

magnum opus, underline and assess its key themes, and suggest ways in which several of them

may be taken forward.

Keywords: ambiguity, complexity, enactment, organizing, process, sensemaking

INTRODUCTION

‘To be complicated is to take pleasure in the process rather than pleasure in the out-

come. That holds true for the process of theorizing as well as for the process of man-

aging. To take pleasure in the process is to understand what an Ithaka means’

Karl E. Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing, 1979, p. 263

Journal of Man agement Studi es 57:7 November 2020

doi:10. 1111/jo ms .12 616

Address for reprints: Haridimos Tsoukas, University of Cyprus and Warwick Business School, Cyprus, UK

(htsoukas@ucy.ac.cy).

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is prop-

erly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

1316 H. Tsoukas et al.

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Management Studies published by Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The Social Psychology of Organizing (hereafter referred for brevity as SPO), first published

in 1969 (Weick, 1969) and revised in 1979 (Weick, 1979; references in this paper will be

made to the 1979 edition) is Karl. E. Weick’s magnum opus. It has been one of the most

influential books ever published in organization and management studies, and has pro-

vided the foundation both for Weick’s rest of ground-breaking research on sensemaking

(especially his other major book Sensemaking in Organizations, Weick, 1995; see also Weick,

2001, 2009) and for what has been called ‘new thinking’ (Tsoukas, 1994, 2005) in orga-

nizational research, which stresses bounded-cum-embodied rationality, reflective action,

process and relationality, ambiguity and paradox, complexity and emergence, becom-

ing, performativity and practice, materiality and embodiment, language and social con-

struction (Czarniawska, 1997, 2008; Hernes, 2014; Lawrence and Phillips, 2019; March,

2008; Morgan, 1986; Nicolini, 2013; Starbuck, 2006). Although extensive citations of

SPO are an indicator of its influence (Anderson, 2006), its impact extends well beyond

that. Weick did not simply write a book that has been widely referenced (and, one hopes,

read) but, importantly, a book that has inspired a new way of talking about organizations

(SPO, p. 26, 234) and has stayed with us ever since.

SPO is an unusual book, especially if compared with other classic books in the field, such

as Simon’s (1945/1976) Administrative Behavior (Simon, 1945/1976), March and Simon’s

(1958) Organizations, Lawrence and Lorsch’s (1967/1986) Organization and the Environment,

Thompson’s (1967) Organizations in Action, Pfeffer and Salancik’s (1978/2003) The External

Control of Organizations, or Pfeffer’s (1982) Organizations and Organization Theory. SPO lacks

the austere organization of these treatises, does not follow a quasi-deductive structure of

reasoning, develops the argument in a sometimes non-linear (recursive) fashion, is often

conversational in tone and essayistic in style, makes use of everyday examples, cartoons

and puzzles, and often playfully invites the reader to engage in thought experiments and

exercises. Occasionally, it looks like a textbook written for students (as was the editor’s

stated intention of the series in which SPO was published, see Kiesler, 1979, iii) but, at

other times, it elevates abstraction to a level more familiar to advanced scholars.

The intellectual inspiration of SPO comes not only from Weick’s home discipline (so-

cial psychology) but also from systems science, cybernetics, evolutionary theory, prag-

matist and phenomenological philosophy, interactional sociology, ethnomethodology,

and a selective engagement with organization theory (Czarniawska, 2006; Weick, 2004).

Indeed, one of the most admirable features of SPO is the diversity of its conceptual

sources and the polyphonic manner they are brought together. Weick does not merely

cite or quote but engages in dialogue with the authors he draws upon (Weick, 2004). SPO

is exemplary for its method of disciplined eclecticism.

Although appreciating abstraction (SPO, p. 26), more than anything else Weick val-

ues creativity and imagination. That is why he does not refrain from partly character-

izing his work as speculative (‘we will not be timid about speculation’, he writes, SPO,

p. 26); avowedly embraces hyperbole; and utilizes incongruity, anthropomorphic lan-

guage, even reification at times, provided they offer him the rhetorical ‘tricks that help

counteract sluggish imaginations’ (SPO, p. 26). Weick (2006, p. 1723) seems to appreciate

the Romantics’ point that ‘a talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well, is

the chief instrument of cultural change’ (Rorty, 1989, p. 7). And SPO certainly does speak

differently. It is, fundamentally, a poetic piece of work (Van Maanen, 1995): it uses language