Post Normal Accident: Revisiting Perrow's Classic / Edition 1 available in Hardcover, Paperback, eBook
Post Normal Accident: Revisiting Perrow's Classic / Edition 1
- ISBN-10:
- 0367502283
- ISBN-13:
- 9780367502287
- Pub. Date:
- 07/07/2020
- Publisher:
- CRC Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0367502283
- ISBN-13:
- 9780367502287
- Pub. Date:
- 07/07/2020
- Publisher:
- CRC Press
Post Normal Accident: Revisiting Perrow's Classic / Edition 1
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$77.99Overview
This book examines the conceptual and empirical evolutions of the past two to three decades to explore their implications for safety management based on several strands of works in various research traditions in safety (e.g. cognitive engineering and system safety, high-reliability organisation, sociology of safety, regulatory studies) and other interdisciplinary fields (e.g. international business, globalisation studies, strategy management, ecology).
It offers a new and insightful interpretation to the challenges of today. It investigates how globalisation has reconfigured the operating landscape of high-risk systems and emphasises the importance of thinking safety through a strategic angle. This book serves as an ideal resource for the safety professionals and safety researchers from any established disciplines such as sociology, engineering, psychology, political science or management.
Features:
- Introduces an original analysis of popular safety writings, including Normal Accident, by Perrow
- Identifies the importance of thinking safety from a sociological angle with the help of key writers
- Stresses the need for greater sensitivity to strategy and "errors from the top" when it comes to the safety of high-risk systems
- Explains how globalisation has reconfigured the operating landscape of high-risk systems
- Renews our understanding of the current safety management challenges in an increasingly global risk picture
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780367502287 |
---|---|
Publisher: | CRC Press |
Publication date: | 07/07/2020 |
Pages: | 186 |
Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Introduction ix
Author xv
1 One Book, Two Theses (NA and na) 1
Introduction 1
The Reception of Normal Accident 2
Singling Out and Comparing High-Risk Systems in the 1980s 2
Critics of Perrow's Technological Determinism 4
Component Accidents versus Normal (or System) Accident 5
Hopkins' Refutation of Normal Accident 5
Hopkins' Omission: The Extended Version of Normal Accident 7
Charles Perrow's Sociology 9
Seven Related Books 9
A Set of Interwoven Studies 9
Perrow's Sociology of Organisations 11
The Context of the 1960s 11
Four Key Dimensions: Technology, Structure, Goals and Environment 13
The Society of Organisations 15
A Summary of Perrow's Sociology 17
Normal Accident, the Second Thesis 18
Reintroducing the Book 18
Sources of Tension When Writing Normal Accident 19
Beyond the Technological Rationale 20
The Case of the Challenger 21
A Neo-Weberian Approach to Disasters 21
Task: A Cognitive Layer of Analysis 22
Goal and Structure: An Organisational/Managerial Layer of Analysis 23
Environment: A Macrosystem Layer of Analysis 25
Summary 25
Implications of the Second Thesis 28
What Does "Normal" Mean? 28
Does the Book Normal Accident Make Any Sense? 29
Was Perrow Right for the Wrong Reasons? 30
A New Version of Normal Accident? 31
Some Limits of Perrow's Argument 31
Summary of Chapter 1 32
2 Hopkins, the Unofficial Theorist of NA 35
Introduction 35
Hopkins, the Storyteller 36
Studying and Visualising Accidents 36
What Do We See in This Picture? 36
Visualisations of Hopkins and Perrow 41
Writing Successful Stories 43
A Narrative Structure 43
An Example of Narrative Structure: Auditing 44
Theory of the Second Thesis 49
The 1980s: Critical White-Collar Crime Model of Accident 49
2000s-2010s: A Normative Theory of Safety 51
Technology (Task), Structure, Goal and Environment 54
(Safety) Culture 56
Back to the Longford Case 58
Confronting the Second Thesis of Normal Accident 58
The Complexity Argument 58
A Sophisticated, Hidden, Normative Model of Safety 59
A New Formulation of the High-Reliability Organisation versus Normal Accident Debate? 61
Summary of Chapter 2 65
3 Errors from the Top 67
Introduction 67
The Obviousness of Strategy 68
Failing Executives and Corporate Malfeasance 68
Organisations at and beyond the Limits 71
What We Know about Human Errors 73
Safety as Strategy 74
The Importance of Strategy for Businesses 74
Linear, Adaptive and Interpretive Views of Strategy 75
Power of Executives and Top Managers 76
Framing Strategy 78
What We Know about Strategic Failures 79
Analysing Strategic Failures 79
Degree of Strategic Failure 81
Defining and Summarising Strategy in the Context of Post Normal Accident 82
Illustrating Safety as Strategy 84
Silo Case 86
Pyro Case 87
Petro Case 89
Safety as Strategy 90
Making Sense of the Three Cases from a Strategic Angle 90
Strategic Mistake, Failure or Fiasco? 92
A New Hindsight Bias? 94
Problem of Strategy or of Strategy Implementation? 95
A New Reductionism? 96
Summary of Chapter 3 98
4 From Component to Network Failure Accidents 99
Introduction 99
Globalisation: A Very Short Overview 100
Globalisation, a Central Notion 100
A First Controversy: Is Globalisation Really New? 101
A Second Controversy: Is Globalisation Good or Bad? 102
A Third Controversy: Is Globalisation a Process of Uniformity? 102
Beyond the Controversies 103
Connecting Globalisation to High-Risk Systems 103
Postbureaucracy 104
Postregulatory State 104
Studies on Globalisation in the Field of Safety 104
Externalisation 105
Standardisation (and Bureaucratisation) 106
Financialisation 108
Digitalisation 109
Self-Regulation 110
Combining Studies 111
Back to Normal Accident 112
A New, Post Normal Accident, Operating Landscape 112
Hopkins' View and Globalisation 113
The Story of BP, the Strategic Fiasco of a Multinational 115
Browne's Legacy 116
The Networked Firm 118
A Postbureaucratic Strategy and Postregulatory State Failures 119
Globalised Trends in the BP Case 120
Financialisation 120
Digitalisation 120
Externalisation 120
Financialisation 121
Standardisation 121
Self-Regulation 121
From Component Failure to Network Failure Accidents 121
Summary of Chapter 4 123
5 (Global) Eco-Socio-Technological Systems: Expanding Scale, Scope and Timeframe 125
Introduction 125
Expanding Scope, Scale and Time Frame 126
High-Risk Systems and Socio technological Risks 126
Globalisation and Systemic Risks 127
Anthropocene, Transhumanism and Existential Risks 129
Widening and Complexifying the Risk Picture 132
Embedded Risk Categories: Complex Interactions 136
Loop A: Causal Circularity between High-Risk Systems and Globalisation 137
Loop B: Causal Circularity between Globalisation and Anthropocene/Transhumanism 138
Rethinking Perrow's Matrix 139
Scale of Governance and Magnitude of Impact 139
Eco-Socio-Technological Disasters 141
The Case of Fukushima Daichi 141
General Complexity 142
Summary of Chapter 5 145
6 Conclusion 147
Two Opposite Theses in One Book 148
Hopkins, an Unofficial Theorist for the Second Thesis of Normal Accident 148
Errors from the Top (versus Sharp-End Human Errors) 149
Network Failure Accidents (versus Component Failure Accidents) 149
From Technical to Eco-Socio-Technological Disasters 150
References 151
Index 165