Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 107
More data. The same blind spot.
Strategic judgment improves when leaders align scanning, interpretation, and action with the uncertainty surrounding a decision
Premise
Organizations do not respond to an environment in raw form. They respond to signals that people notice, select, discuss, classify, and interpret. A leadership team can possess extensive data and still misread a competitor, regulation, technology, or customer shift when the organization searches within familiar categories or resolves contradictory evidence too quickly.
Richard L. Daft and Karl E. Weick’s 1984 model treats the organization as an interpretation system. Its executive value is diagnostic: it links how leaders view an environment with how actively the organization searches it, then shows how those choices shape the meaning available for coordinated action. Communication is part of strategy formation because interpretation occurs through meetings, reports, conversations, narratives, and experiments.
What the model is: Organizations as Interpretation Systems in Knowledge →
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- The essential model
- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
- Executive takeaway
- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryTheories & Explanatory Models
- DomainOrganization & Structure
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Theories & Explanatory Models
Explains how or why a communication process works by relating mechanisms, conditions or variables. Its value is an account that can guide inquiry into what produces an outcome, rather than a name for the outcome alone.