SOTE 2026 - Lifetime Achievement Award for Karl Weick

It is with great sadness that we learnt of the passing of Professor Karl E. Weick. For those of us working in safety, organizations and human performance, Karl's influence is hard to overstate. His ideas - sensemaking, loose coupling, mindful organising, high-reliability organisations - reshaped how we think about how people actually cope with complexity, ambiguity and risk. His work on the Mann Gulch disaster alone changed how a generation understood the collapse of structure under pressure. At Safety on the Edge in Baltimore, Karl was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award - a fitting recognition of a body of work that has guided researchers and practitioners for decades. Malcolm Staves gave the presentation that evening and the recording link is below. Karl taught us that organising is something we do, continuously, together - and that meaning is made in the doing. That lesson outlives him.