Discourses of an Organizational Tragedy: Emotion, Sensemaking, and Learning After the Yarnell Hill Fire

Williams, Elizabeth A.; Ishak, Andrew W.

doi:10.1080/10570314.2017.1313446

Cited by 13 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Buzzanell (2010) describes this process of crafting normalcy as one "embedded in material realities and generated by talk-in-interaction" (p. 4). To explain, after the Yarnell Hill Fire, several hotshot firefighters described the pull they had to return to work as well as the need to talk about the incident and make sense of it with other members of their crew (Williams and Ishak, 2018). These firefighters were recreating normalcy (i.e.…”

Section: Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The US Forest Service as an organization, the multiple hotshot crews that work across the USA, and individual hotshot firefighters had to exercise resilience in the face of this tragedy. Following the tragedy, we interviewed 24 organizational members to see how they responded to (Williams and Ishak, 2018) and learned from (Ishak and Williams, 2017) the event. When analyzing the data from that project, we noted the resilience of our participants and the larger wildland firefighting community.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A dynamic model of organizational resilience: adaptive and anchored approaches

Ishak

Williams

2018

CCIJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose Organizations of all types desire to be imbued with resilience, or the ability to withstand and bounce back from difficult events (Richardson, 2002; Walsh 2003). But resilience does not play the same role in every organization. Previous research (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2011) has argued that organizations can be more or less resilient. For high reliability organizations (HROs) such as fire crews and emergency medical units, resilience is a defining feature. Due to the life-or-death nature of their work, the ability to be successful in the face of difficult events is imperative to the process of HROs. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This is a theory piece. Findings The authors put forth a dual-spectrum model that introduces adaptive and anchored approaches to organizational resilience. Research limitations/implications There are organizations for which resilience is only enacted when the organization must overcome difficult events. And at the other end are organizations that may not enact resilience in difficult times, and therefore fail or deteriorate. But while it has been shown that organizations can be more or less resilient, there has been little attention paid to how organizations may have differing types of resilience. Originality/value In this piece, the authors theorize that resilience may differ in type between organizations. Drawing on theoretical approaches to resilience from communication (Buzzanell, 2010), organizational behavior (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2011), and motivational psychology (Dweck, 2016), the authors introduce a model that views resilience as a dynamic construct in organizations. The authors argue that an organization’s resilience-centered actions affect – and are determined by – its approach to Buzzanell’s (2010) five communicative processes of resilience. The authors offer testable propositions, as well as theoretical and practical implications from this model, not only for HROs, but for all organizations.

show abstract

Section: Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A dynamic model of organizational resilience: adaptive and anchored approaches

Ishak

Williams

2018

CCIJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One assistant superintendent said he tells his crew to read “every fatality report that comes across their desk.” This sentiment was echoed by other squad leaders. Our participants noted that they learn about failures in their field with the goal of understanding what they would do if faced with a similar situation—not with the goal of assigning blame for the failure (Williams & Ishak, 2017); in this way, the explicit purpose of reviewing incidents is slide creation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, we asked, “What is the decision-making process like for you and/or your team?” and “Do you ever rely on what you have heard about others’ experiences when making decisions? Can you give me an example of a time you did this?” Additional questions, which are not the focus of this particular analysis, explored participants’ responses to the Yarnell Hill Fire and how the tragedy affected the ways participants approached their jobs (see Williams & Ishak, 2017). Interviews ranged from 18 to 51 min, with an average length of 32 min.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Slides in the Tray: How Fire Crews Enable Members to Borrow Experiences

Ishak

Williams

2017

Small Group Research

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Experiential learning is essential for many high-performing teams, yet there are also challenges to its incorporation into team training. Using an interpretivist lens, this study explores how members of wildfire crews are encouraged to appropriate the experiences of their teammates to improve team process. First, we offer a tripartite argument for how experiential learning is inhibited. Then, based on our findings, we argue that a key practice of critical teamwork is the ability of team members to “borrow” experiences or learn from the experiences of others. We examine how firefighters interpret the concept of experience; the delineation between experiences and personal experiences was often blurred, as some firefighters spoke about experience as something that could be gained through activities that are not specifically firefighting. We delineate five training interactions through which firefighters are encouraged to appropriate the experiences of their colleagues. We then discuss how this extends the principles of the Nested Phase Model for critical teams and suggest areas for future research. These findings have implications for all types of critical teams—including military units and medical teams—as well as high-reliability organizations.

show abstract

“…Various scholars joined the USDA Forest Service for a four day workshop entitled, "Managing the unexpected in prescribed fire use operations: A workshop on the high reliability organization" (Keller, Weick, Sutcliffe, Saveland, Lahey, Thomas et al, 2004), in which they revisited the site of the 2000 Cerro Grande Prescribed Fire (Lonnie, Thompson, Loach, Delfin, & Przybylek, 2000). The investigation report on the Yarnell Hill incident (U.S. Forest Service, 2013) includes a lengthy consideration of both sensemaking and reliability; likewise, scholars have interrogated Yarnell through the same lenses (Ishak & Williams, 2017;Williams & Ishak, 2018). This and other research is motivated by the hope Weick (1993) expressed over 25 years ago that derived knowledge from Mann Gulchand, in the intervening years, other researchmight "forestall similar disasters in other organizations, " (p. 634).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The collapse of sensemaking at Yarnell Hill: the effects of endogenous ecological chaos on enactment

Parrish

Clark

Holloway

2020

EJMS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose Since Weick’s (1993) seminal Mann Gulch paper articulated a collapse of sensemaking, scholars have repeatedly investigated sensemaking downstream of enactment. Motivated by another wildland firefighting tragedy, the tragic loss of 19 firefighters in Arizona in 2013, this study aims to look at enactment itself and reveals that the endogenous creation and re-creation of the wildland fire caused a fatal feedback loop of “trigger traps” leading to perpetual enactment that short-circuited sensemaking. Wildland fires can have unpredictable consequences, which triggers in individual sensemakers a fatal and continuous return to the beginning of the sensemaking process. Design/methodology/approach This paper’s approach is a case study based on a textual analysis of sources investigating the 2013 Yarnell Hill fire. The authors also carefully compared the Yarnell Hill and Mann Gulch disasters in search of breakdowns in sensemaking that could help us understand why we continue to lose firefighters in the line of duty. Findings The simultaneously volatile and complex environment at Yarnell illustrates sensemaking antecedents to the study of enactment. The findings suggest ways that organizations – those fighting wildfire or those fighting a global pandemic – can avoid getting trapped in the early stages of enactment and can retain resilience in their sensemaking. Originality/value This paper introduces the concept of “trigger traps” to help explain the fatal feedback loop of repeated environmental triggers in the early stages of sensemaking in volatile environments.

show abstract

Discourses of an Organizational Tragedy: Emotion, Sensemaking, and Learning After the Yarnell Hill Fire

Cited by 13 publications

References 32 publications

A dynamic model of organizational resilience: adaptive and anchored approaches

A dynamic model of organizational resilience: adaptive and anchored approaches

Slides in the Tray: How Fire Crews Enable Members to Borrow Experiences

The collapse of sensemaking at Yarnell Hill: the effects of endogenous ecological chaos on enactment

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About