p.203 Glassman (1973) wrote that loose coupling is present when systems have either few variables in common or the variables they have in common are weak (p. 73). [JLJ - correction - page 84]

p.203 Weick (1976) defined loose coupling as a situation in which elements are responsive, but retain evidence of separateness and identity (p. 3).

p.203-204 Later, [Weick] wrote that loose coupling is evident when elements affect each other "suddenly (rather than continuously), occasionally (rather than constantly), negligibly (rather than significantly), indirectly (rather than directly), and eventually (rather than immediately)" (Weick, 1982a, p.380).

p.204 as Levine (1985) argued, underspecified formulations often serve as a vehicle through which investigators can work on difficult conceptual problems.

p.204 Organizations appear to be both determinate, closed systems searching for certainty and indeterminate, open systems expecting uncertainty. Faced with these "incompatible concepts," and with "the fact that our culture does not contain concepts for simultaneously thinking about rationality and indeterminateness" (Thompson, 1967, p. 10), people simplify their analyses either by ignoring uncertainty to see rationality or by ignoring rational action to see spontaneous processes.

p.204 Loose coupling has proven to be a durable concept precisely because it allows organizational analysts to explain the simultaneous existence of rationality and indeterminacy without specializing these two logics in distinct locations.

p.205 If a person selectively attends to the determinacy that exists among some elements, he or she will describe the interdependence as a tightly coupled system. That characterization is partly inaccurate because not all elements and linkages are affected and parts of the system remain loose and open.

p.205 the concept of loose coupling allows theorists to posit that any system, in any organizational location, can act on both a technical level, which is closed to outside forces (coupling produces stability), and an institutional level, which is open to outside forces (looseness produces flexibility).

p.205 If there is both distinctiveness and responsiveness, the system is loosely coupled.

p.206 The causation-seeking voice is structured around three recurring explanations for what causes loose coupling: causal indeterminacy, fragmentation of the external environment, and fragmentation of the internal environment.

p.206 March (1987) argued that ambiguity causes loose coupling, and he identified four ambiguities that are inherent in decision environments; (a) the preferences of decision makers are unstable and unpredictable over time; (b) problems, solutions, and actions are unrelated to each other; (c) self-interested reason is subordinated to occasionally obsolescent traditions; and (d) information is used primarily to create meaning out of previous decisions.

p.210 As the tightness of couplings increases, the modularity [JLJ - Page-Jones (1980)](p. 102) of the system decreases.

p.210 Weick (1976) proposed that loosely coupled systems could more accurately register their environments through requisite variety. (A system has requisite variety to the extent that its elements serve as a medium that can register inputs with accuracy.) Additionally, registering improves when elements become more numerous and the constraints among them weaken (Heider, 1959; Orton, 1988).

p.210 March (1987) suggested that ambiguity creates loose coupling between information activities and decision activities and that this loose coupling creates autonomy for information gatherers.

p.212 Peters (1978) wrote that "small step strategies" within "vast, loosely linked systems" may produce more effective, efficient, interesting, varied, and thoughtful organizational changes (p. 49).

p.213 Persistence, a general term referring to stability, resistance to change, and continued operation, is discussed frequently as an organizational outcome of loose coupling.

p.214 In the literature on loose coupling, three types of adaptability have been suggested: experimentation, collective judgement, and dissent.

p.214 To cope directly with conditions such as apparent causal indeterminacy, people often "act to expose the conditions for acting; causal relationships in the environment or in the interface between learner and environment are gradually untangled" (Hedberg, 1981, p. 4). Actions that untangle causality are what is meant by experimentation.

p.214 Perrow (1984) [Normal accidents: Living with high-risk technologies] argued that if complex technologies were more loosely coupled, operators would be able to find solutions through exploratory problem solving.

p.215 Eisenberg (1984) wrote that ambiguity facilitates "unified diversity" because people retain multiple understandings while believing their understanding is singular and shared. The result is an increased likelihood of adaptability.

p.219 As Grandori (1987) noted, "A system in which everybody can do everything and in which the links between various parts do not necessarily have to follow given interdependence relationships but are virtually interchangeable and separable is a concept that organization theory had previously treated primarily in terms of peer groups. Indeterminists coined the phrase loosely coupled systems to define complex organizations that have this feature" (pp. 93-94).