In Weick’s first book (1979 second edition), he begins his discussion on organising based around a selection of narratives and a ‘grook’ (p.14). A grook (pronounced ‘gruk’) is an aphoristic poem associated with the Danish philosopher Piet Hein. They estimate that Hein wrote over 10,000 of these poems (https://briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/grooks-brief-poems-by-piet-hein/). Hein’s grooks were often accompanied with a simple semiotic and a simple musing on a philosophical issue.
What an interesting way to commence a book on theorising about organising! Weick is so imaginative and creative in his thinking, that he starts and frames his book through Poetics (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/poetics-and-risk-feeling-into-being/). Philosophy and Poetics share much in common (https://www.sackett.net/Philosophy-as-Poetry.pdf). Indeed, Rorty (2016) argues that they are one and the same.
The grook that Weick quotes is called ‘Majority Rule’ and discusses how majorities are organised/emerge. Weick maps this emergence as follows:
In a similar way to our discussion in our book Following-Leading (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/following-leading-risk/), Weick argues that leaders and majorities emerge under the influence of a ‘zone of indifference’. In other words, it is the follower’s tolerance of the nature of emergence in organisations that ‘allows’ leaders to operate.
It is a wonderful discussion that turns most leadership and organising discourse on its head.
This follows from Weick’s discussion on organising where he states eleven key dynamics that function in organising:
- Equivocal information triggers
- Efforts to stabilize meanings for equivocal displays typically involve the efforts of two or more
- Most efforts at sensemaking involve interpretation of previous happenings and of writing plausible histories that link these previous happenings with current
- Interdependencies among people are the substance of organizations, but these interdependencies are fluid and
- Organizations have a major hand in creating the realities which they then view as “facts” to which they must
- An ambivalent stance with respect to “lessons of experience” is a major way in which organizations preserve some adaptability to cope withchanged
- Events in organizations are held together and regulated by dense, circular, lengthy strands of causality perceived by members.
- Networks of self-regulating causal links are realized in the form of coordinated behaviours between two or more
- Organizations frequently use only parts of persons, and those portions used vary in the ease with which they can be replaced.
- Most policies within organizations have both internal and external consequences, whether intended or not, and these consequences may work in opposite
- There is ambivalence within organizations toward being open and closed and toward being suspicious and
There is so much packed into Weick’s first chapter (https://archive.org/details/socialpsychology0000weic_2nded ) it could give you a headache. Much of his philosophical discussion in this book lays the foundation for the books that come later, that Safety has latched on to.
Just imagine if Safety thought like Weick and started thinking about risk through Poetics? This is so far from the mechanistic, behaviourist and scientist myths that Safety projects onto Weick and into its concocted understanding of safety.
All of this and much more will be explored in the free workshops on Weick and HROing being conducted in June. You can register for these free workshops here: admin@spor.com.au
Prof. Robert Long
Latest posts by Prof. Robert Long (see all)
- Weick’s Expectations of the Unexpected - May 13, 2026
- The Non-Revolution in Safety - May 12, 2026
- Suspending Your Agenda to Begin Learning in Risk - May 11, 2026
- The De-Ethicization of the Object in Safety - May 9, 2026
- Weick’s Organising as ‘Consensually Validated Grammar’ - May 9, 2026
Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below