From Bricolage to Collage: The Making of Decisions at a Weather Forecast Office

Abstract

This article elaborates the process of decision making in organizational environments characterized by disciplined improvisation. Building on an ethnography of forecasting operations at the National Weather Service, it introduces “collage” as a mediating concept between information bricolage and the forging of a decision. The concept of collage serves to (1) heuristically frame decision making as a process of assembling, appropriating, superimposing, juxtaposing, and blurring of information; and (2) externalize into digital practices of screenwork the cognitive labor of merging and distilling complex data into a provisionally coherent decision.