ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I examine how organizations learn-and fail to learn-about the physical world. Of course, most organizations “get it right” about the physical world most of the time. We do not commonly encounter poison mushrooms in the supermarket, elevators hardly ever crash, buildings rarely collapse, and commercial airline operations are almost always safe. Yet, we can think of many cases of organizations “getting it wrong” about the physical world, that is, failing to understand physical processes relevant to their activities, some of which are exceedingly consequential. In November 1940, for example, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a large and graceful suspension bridge near Seattle, collapsed from the force exerted by a light wind. As it turned out, and odd as it might sound to us, professionals in the organizations responsible for designing and building the bridge had not sufficiently understood the aerodynamic forces involved. After a century of building suspension bridges, the question is: why not?
