Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies - Updated Edition

(Paperback, Updated Edition)

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This text analyzes the social side of technological risk. It argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety, building more warnings and safeguards, fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. The author asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. By recognizing two dimensions of risk, complex versus linear interactions and tight versus loose coupling, the book provides a framework for analyzing risks and the organizations that insist on they are run.

Reviews

"[Normal Accidents is] a penetrating study of catastrophes and near catastrophes in several high-risk industries. Mr. Perrow ... writes lucidly and makes it clear that 'normal' accidents are the inevitable consequences of the way we launch industrial ventures... An outstanding analysis of organizational complexity."--John Pfeiffer, The New York Times "[Perrow's] research undermines promises that 'better management' and 'more operator training' can eliminate catastrophic accidents. In doing so, he challenges us to ponder what could happen to justice, community, liberty, and hope in a society where such events are normal."--Deborah A. Stone, Technology Review "Normal Accidents is a testament to the value of rigorous thinking when applied to a critical problem."--Nick Pidgeon, Nature

Author Bio

Charles Perrow is Professor of Sociology at Yale University. His other books include The Radical Attack on Business, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay, and The AIDS Disaster: The Failure of Organizations in New York and the Nation.