Loosely Coupled Systems: A Reconceptualization

Orton, James Douglas; Weick, Karl E.

doi:10.2307/258154

Cited by 973 publications

(1,064 citation statements)

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“…The second stakeholder in turn should decide whether or not to share the information with all of its own type of stakeholders. According to Orton and Weick (1990), each individual makes sense of the information and passes it on, which gives meaning to information and helps create plausible images that rationalize what is going on. Sense-making requires making assumptions and giving significance, and it sometimes involves neglecting things that may be important.…”

Section: Individual Level Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges and obstacles in sharing and coordinating information during multi-agency disaster response: Propositions from field exercises

2009

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Although various scholars have researched issues regarding disaster management, few have studied the sharing and coordinating of information during disasters. Not much empirical data is available in this field and there is sparse insight into the factors that may impede or facilitate information sharing and coordination among stakeholders. In this paper, we provide an overview of the relevant obstacles and challenges by examining existing literature and then investigating a series of multi-agency disaster management exercises, using observations and a survey. Although all the people who took part in our study agree that sharing information is important, for the success of their own organization as well as the exercise as a whole, the extent to which information is actually being shared among organizations is often limited by a number of factors that can be attributed to the community, agency and individual level. We found that relief workers are often more concerned with receiving information from others than with providing information to others who may benefit. Incentives for sharing information, understanding each other's work-processes and the usability of information systems have shown positive effects on information sharing and coordination. The findings of our study have been formulated using six grounded propositions, which can be used by system designers and policy-makers upon validation in further research. We also provide directions for future research.

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Section: Individual Level Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges and obstacles in sharing and coordinating information during multi-agency disaster response: Propositions from field exercises

2009

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“…This finding is understandable in light of the concept of "loose-coupling" (Orton & Weick, 1990) and the specific ontological nature of psychology as a fragmented human science (Bandura, 2001) in which the scientific laws found in the natural sciences are lacking. Gelso (2006) has reminded us that scientific theories should conceivably maintain the role of indirect relevance to professional work.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…This is because human behaviour is guided by complex biopsychosocial mechanisms, of which the science of psychology has as yet a rather limited understanding (Bandura, 2001). Orton and Weick (1990) conceived the notion of "causal indeterminacy" to refer to uncertain means-ends relations that are a central feature of the work of expert professionals in several discipline, such as teaching, consulting and psychology. To our knowledge, there are no unambiguous, scientifically confirmed interventions that can secure the expected result of resolving a client's psychological problem.…”

Section: Specific Skills Needed In An Expert Professionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming a Graduate Professional Psychologist: In What Ways are Professional Competences Perceived

Kuittinen¹,

Räty²

2015

IJPS

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Based on the evaluations of graduate professional psychologists, this study set out to explore perceptions of university training in the development of key competencies and skills required by psychologists. The participants (n=353) were a representative sample of young Finnish psychologists with professional experience of between one and six years. They were asked to rate seventeen different skills according to importance and the extent to which undergraduate training helped develop those skills. They were also asked to evaluate how their undergraduate training had fostered their skills and the work-related contexts that best nurtured their professional skills. The results show that psychology was seen as a profession requiring social interaction skills, whereas university training was seen to stress knowledge, theory and research. Respondents saw practical courses, a practicum, post-graduate education, actual work and reflecting with colleagues and with oneself as the most influential means of professional development; they saw statistical methods as being unnecessary at work. Only half of the participants could name a theory upon which their work was based. Still, graduate psychologists gave a rather positive evaluation of the correlation of their psychology training programme with the requirements of their profession.

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“…As Orton & Weick (1990) and Perrow (1984) explain, loosely coupled systems are more forgiving in case of delays or faults. However the coupling can be too loose, in which case the output of a system becomes unpredictable.…”

Section: Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Risk analysis and big data

Ale

2016

Safety and Reliability

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Big Data can help overcome various problems that exist in present risk analysis practices. By analysing systems as a whole, it is no longer necessary to define in advance what a failure is and what a success is. It is also possible to evaluate how factors that are considered to promote success can combine into catastrophic failures. Big in Big Data is relative. What was called big data 25 years ago is now called small. The continuous development of analysis techniques over the years have resulted in several operational models that use the concept of Big Data. They will become better as the technology and the accessibility of data further improves. With this new generation of systems models, accidents and incidents do not have to wait for analysis to after the fact. They can be studied beforehand in a model. Replacing hindsight by foresight can help to make the world safer, if we desire to do so.

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Loosely Coupled Systems: A Reconceptualization

Cited by 973 publications

References 0 publications

Challenges and obstacles in sharing and coordinating information during multi-agency disaster response: Propositions from field exercises

Challenges and obstacles in sharing and coordinating information during multi-agency disaster response: Propositions from field exercises

Becoming a Graduate Professional Psychologist: In What Ways are Professional Competences Perceived

Risk analysis and big data

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