Karl Weick passed away on May 21, 2026, at the age of 89

In the field of industrial safety, Weick is best known for his book "Managing the Unexpected", co-authored with Kathleen Sutcliffe, reissued and expanded several times.

However, his influence extends far beyond this book, which represents only a small part of his work. Admittedly, this body of work is not easy to grasp. First, his scholarly writings are not particularly accessible. Second, he never identified himself with a specific school or movement, even though he is often associated with High Reliability Organizations (HROs). Finally, rather than studying accidents and reliability as a research domain, he considered them as an entry point to explore broader questions about how organizations function.

His work has also had a major impact on organization studies. His ideas have been widely mobilized to analyze a wide range of issues. From a safety perspective, one might regret this relative dilution of his contributions. Yet this has had the positive consequence of making the issue of accidents more visible – and even salient – particularly among management researchers who did not have a spontaneous interest in this topic.

It is indeed through the analysis of accidents (some of which are very well known: Tenerife, Bhopal) that Weick developed his theory of sensemaking. In his famous analysis of the Mann Gulch fire, it is the sudden inability to make sense of the situation they were facing that led to the loss of the firefighters who had set out to fight what initially appeared to be an ordinary forest fire. Conversely, in the case of the Bristol Royal Infirmary, it is the persistence of an accepted (but erroneous) interpretation of events that justified disastrous interventions on newborns by surgeons who did not have the appropriate skills and resources. These two cases clearly illustrate Weick’s central theme: the relationship between actors and a reality that constantly threatens to elude them. Our relationship with reality is marked by fundamental uncertainty and ambiguity, constantly threatening our control over the course of action. However, routine, the demands of everyday action, the concern for efficiency, confidence in our abilities, a sense of control, the judgments we are exposed to, our obligation for consistency in our actions, the words we use without questioning how they are understood, the cultures in which we are immersed, past successes, future expectations, and many other factors confine us within a form of comfort built on self-evidence, banality, and continuity.

At a time when technologies – especially AI – promise to make the world, if not self-evident, at least effortlessly readable, Weick’s ideas appear more relevant than ever.