Karl E. Weick, the Rensis Likert Collegiate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Psychology in the School of Business Administration, will give the 21st annual Katz Newcomb Lecture in Social Psychology at 4 p.m. Friday (April 23) in Rackham Amphitheater.
In his lecture “ ‘Young Men and Fire’—Rethinking Organizational Theory,” Weick will discuss how assumptions often made to understand organized activity no longer make sense. The first part of his title “Young Men and Fire” refers to the Norman Maclean book by that title—a story about the famous Mann Gulch firefighting tragedy, the worst in history, in which 16 people died and three survived.
Weick will argue that new theoretical assumptions, built from a combination of social science and humanities, make more sense of Mann Gulch and more sense of newer forms of organizations than previous ones.
The event will begin with a 3 p.m. coffee hour; a reception and dinner will follow the lecture at 5:30 p.m.
A seminar at 9 a.m. Saturday (April 24) in the East Conference Room, Rackham Building, will be followed by an informal brunch at 11 a.m.
The Katz Newcomb lecture honors Daniel Katz, professor emeritus of psychology, and the late Prof. Emeritus of Psychology Theodore M. Newcomb for their contributions to the development of social psychology as an interdisciplinary, quantitative social science at the U-M.
This year the lecture series also celebrates the life of the late Rensis Likert, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Research. 1993 marks the 90th birth anniversary of Katz, Likert and Newcomb.
