Rensis Likert
Distinguished
University Professor
of Organizational
Behavior and
Psychology
Professor of
Psychology
University of
Michigan
karlw@umich.edu
My work on the
conditions that
precipitate a
collapse of
sensemaking in
organizations,
initially looks like
the very kind of
work that positive
psychologists such
as Seligman want to
counteract. The work
is partly about
adversity, error,
failure, and
pathology. But I
emphasize the
qualifier “partly.”
There are facets of
this work that can
help in the
consolidation and
articulation of
positive
organizational
scholarship.
Collective tragedies
such as wildland
firefighting
fatalities, excess
deaths in pediatric
surgery, and airline
disasters get
organized in part
when people cling to
plausible optimistic
interpretations of
what is unfolding,
and shield these
emerging stories
from additional cues
that suggest a
darker, more
uncertain
trajectory. From
this perspective,
the study of
positive psychology
does look initially
like an examination
of the perverse
conditions that lure
people to become
entrapped by
optimism. People who
get entrapped by
optimism may well
postpone their
continuing search
for darker stories
of threat and danger
that enable them to
take preemptive
action.
If optimism has the
potential to augment
the organizing of a
tragedy, and if
wariness and doubt
and suspicion have
the potential to
forestall tragedy,
then positivity is
more complicated
than it first
appears. If we take
a closer look at
those complications
then we may improve
our understanding of
positive experience.
Specifically, the
juxtaposition of
tragedy and triumph
forged by struggles
for alertness that
fail and produce
fatalities, may
reveal an invisible
infrastructure of
virtue. In the case
of tragedies in
wildland
firefighting, for
example, virtue lies
in such unexpected
places as
containment of
further damage in
the unfolding
tragedy (e.g.
pulling 2 campers
inside one’s single
person fire
shelter), provision
of pathways for
recovery (e.g. crews
burn out a new
safety zone when
more firefighters
are assigned to an
active fire),
respectful
interactions that
forestall panic
reactions (e.g.
people converse over
radios while in fire
shelters as fire
passes overhead),
experimenting that
holds promise but is
rendered incomplete
by the rush of
events (e.g.
deploying fire
shelter on rocks but
unable to get a good
seal because rocks
turn out to be too
uneven), doing the
right thing but
without the
credibility
necessary to
convince others
(e.g. inventing an
escape fire that
would save lives but
that everyone
avoids), reaffirming
an identity that
creates cohesion and
pride but
complicates the
meaning of a failure
to disengage (e.g.
firefighter dies
‘with his boots
on’), candor rather
than concealment
about foul-ups
thereby focusing
attention on key
conditions that did
have causal impact
(e.g. I should never
have handed over
this fire in the
heat of the day),
and validating the
importance of
feeling as a guide
to action (e.g. when
my gut told me that
this fire ‘feels
dicey’ I should have
been more insistent
when I expressed
that feeling). Woven
into many tragedies
are moments of human
strength and
resilience. These
moments do not
neutralize the blunt
fact that we are
talking about
failures and
fatalities. But they
do suggest that
there is more to be
learned from those
tragic events, and
more leads for
positive organizing,
than we may realize.
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