Robert P. Gephart

Organizations and Risk in Late Modernity

Risk is an important but under-investigated feature of organizations in Late Modernity. This paper introduces the Special Issue on Organizations and Risk in Late Modernity. The rationale for the special issue is discussed. An overview of important approaches to risk research and organizations is provided to frame the special issue. These approaches include the cognitive science approach, which takes a positivist perspective and assumes that risks are objective and knowable. This view is contrasted with socio-cultural theories based in work by Mary Douglas, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault. Charles Perrows organizational theory of the production of risk and accidents due to interactive complexity, and Karl Weicks theory of risk sensemaking, are then discussed. The paper then reviews the contributions of papers in the special issue and outlines issues for future research on risk and organizations.

Computer-facilitated Qualitative Data Analysis: Potential Contributions to Management Research

The development of software programs designed to facilitate qualitative data analysis has proltferated recently. Despite their potential to contribute much to management research, very little concerning the use of such programs has appeared in the management literature. The purpose of this paper is to review the current state of computer-facilitated qualitative data analysis [CQDA] in order to contribute to its effective use by management researchers. In an effort to achieve this purpose we discuss why CQDA programs are proliferating, describe the potential of such programs to contribute to management research, address program capabilities and features, describe CQDA applications in management research, and review issues researchers should be aware of in considering the use of C&DA.

Succession Sensemaking and Organizational Change: A Story of a Deviant College President

A conceptual framework or model of the sensemaking practices, cultural objects and “programmatically constructed entities” used to produce meaningful stories of succession and organisational change are presented. The framework is elaborated and tested through an expansion analysis of a story about the termination of a “deviant” college president. It is discussed how the present framework can help managers and researchers better understand and manage organisational storytelling and organisational change.

Sensemaking, communicative distortion and the logic of public inquiry legitimation

This paper investigates the public inquiry as a ceremonial legitimator of state responses to technological disaster. The paper addresses: (1) the implications of welfare state theory for understanding the public inquiry; (2) the commu nicative validity claims and counter-claims made by inquiry participants; (3) how sensemaking practices are used to interpret and transform these claims into institutionally sensible accounts; and (4) how the inquiry legitimates state and corporate responses to technological disaster. To investigate these issues, the paper describes a public inquiry into a fatal pipeline accident and then analyses key segments of inquiry testimony. The paper demonstrates that the inquiry distorted local logics of safety used by members and transformed these into the top-down logics of safety regulators. This distortion preserved the vi ability of disaster control through state regulation and thereby legitimated state actions and control procedures. The paper concludes by addressing the practi cal implications of the research.

Cultural Rationalities in Crisis Sensemaking: a Study of a Public Inquiry into a Major Industrial Accident

This paper investigates the sensemaking which occurred during a public in quiry into a fatal gas pipeline accident. The research conceives of the public inquiry as an important stage in crises, and investigates the role of multiple perspectives and rationalities in crisis sensemaking. Stakeholders at the in quiry are shown to differ in terms of their social organization, the cultural biases they hold, and the interpretations they make of events and risks. The paper extends the multiple perspectives approach to crises by linking this approach to theoretical developments in cultural analysis, and by showing the implica tions multiple perspectives have for inquiry and crisis stakeholders.

Ethnostatistics and Organizational Research Methodologies An Introduction

Ethnostatistics is the empirical study of how professional scholars construct and use statistics and numerals in scholarly research. This article provides an overview of the objectives, contents, and contributions of the current theme issue. The nature and relevance of ethnostatistics to organizational issues are discussed. Three levels of ethnostatistics are identified and explained— constructing statistics, statistics at work, and the rhetoric of statistics. The contributions the theme issue provides to these three levels of ethnostatistics are discussed. Foundational perspectives that have shaped ethnostatistics are explored to highlight important assumptions of the field and to distinguish ethnostatistics from related fields. The theme issue broadens the field of ethnostatistics to address statistical practices used by business professionals for organizational purposes. The article concludes by arguing that the field of ethnostatistics needs to develop rapidly at this point in time to address the emerging centrality and importance that statistics hold for everyday organizational life.

Managing the Meaning of a Sour Gas Well Blowout: The Public Culture of Organizational Disasters

This research essay addresses the rhetorical, meaning management practices used in public accounts of organizational disasters. Fourteen newspaper arti cles which chronologically constitute the public emergence of the 1982 Lodge pole, Alberta sour gas well blowout are used as data to illustrate how interpretive practices used in cultural accounts transform organizational events into public problems. The practices discussed are: (1) the construction of social objects and effects as sensemaking resources, (2) normalizing events by constructing accounts which minimize disastrous effects, and (3) using irony to make events appear abnormal, interesting and fundamentally disruptive. The paper thus addresses how public, cultural accounts socially construct organizational dis asters and how organizational disasters both breach and sustain the myth of social order. The paper concludes with discussion of practical implications this research has for organizational stakeholders.

Sensemaking and New Media at Work

This article examines sensemaking about new media at work in organizational settings. Two models of sensemaking are presented. Recent social science and management research on computer-mediated work is reviewed to identify aspects of sensemaking evident in computer-mediated communications at work. The sensemaking models are used to interpret this recent research on human computer interactions and computer-mediated communications in organizations. The article shows how the sensemaking perspective facilitates an understanding of the interpretive practices and problems people face in using new media for communication at work.

Postmodernism and the future history of management

Addresses themes in postmodern management which can be anticipated and better understood by taking a historical perspective on the origins and emergence of modern management. Reviews essays in this volume concerning history as science, and notes that the essays collectively address issues related to the emergence of modern management, management education and management inquiry. Notes that recent trends in organization and management practice suggest that “management” is vanishing as a social and historical category. Thus indicates possible postmodern alternatives to management which may compose its future history.

Normal Risk: Technology, Sense Making, and Environmental Disasters

Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow (1984) demonstrates how complex, tightly coupled technological systems produce accidents. The theory of normal accidents argues that organizations can create technological systems that produce ecosystems disasters and impacts. Organizations cannot prevent or mitigate these disasters and impacts once the technological system is operational (Perrow, 1997). The current article discusses the important insights that Normal Accidents provides into risk sense making and ecosystems accidents. Research that extends Perrow’s (1984) work is reviewed to provide insights into how societies legitimate high-risk technologies that are prone to failure and to environmental disaster. The article concludes by encouraging researchers to follow Perrow’s (1994, p. 10) call to examine “systems that have not had accidents” from a critical perspective.