High Reliability and Crisis Management – serie

"Reliability" has become a watchword in the business community. Increasingly, it refers to anticipation and resilience organizations' ability to plan for, absorb, and rebound from shocks. Across many sectors and cases, the approach to improving reliability in primary technical systems has been remarkably similar. Stakeholders assume that improved reliability lies in better design and technology.This book speaks to the severe limits of formal design and technology relative to operational skills, experience, and knowledge. The debate over the vulnerability of critical infrastructures has far too often neglected the managerial dimension of public security and business continuity. High Reliability Management is the first book about the people who manage for high reliability, namely, those professionals who provide critical services continuously and safely, even during peak demand times or periods of stress.The text draws on one of the most intensive studies of a critical infrastructure within a high reliability framework. This longitudinal analysis examines the California electrical gridone of the largest, most complex, and economically important in the world. From this research comes a new perspective on strategic balances in society, and practical advice to researchers and professionals who confront reliability daily.

"Reliability" has become a watchword in the business community. Increasingly, it refers to anticipation and resilience organizations' ability to plan for, absorb, and rebound from shocks. Across many sectors and cases, the approach to improving reliability in primary technical systems has been remarkably similar. Stakeholders assume that improved reliability lies in better design and technology.This book speaks to the severe limits of formal design and technology relative to operational skills, experience, and knowledge. The debate over the vulnerability of critical infrastructures has far too often neglected the managerial dimension of public security and business continuity. High Reliability Management is the first book about the people who manage for high reliability, namely, those professionals who provide critical services continuously and safely, even during peak demand times or periods of stress.The text draws on one of the most intensive studies of a critical infrastructure within a high reliability framework. This longitudinal analysis examines the California electrical gridone of the largest, most complex, and economically important in the world. From this research comes a new perspective on strategic balances in society, and practical advice to researchers and professionals who confront reliability daily.

People and organizations are perfectly capable of making the most outrageous missteps. But, how does a person, organization, or society know that it is committing an error? And, how can we tell that when others are steering us down wrong paths? Dirty Rotten Strategies delves into how organizations and interest groups lure us into solving the "wrong problems" with intricate, but inaccurate, solutions. Authors Ian I. Mitroff and Abraham Silvers argue that we can never be sure if we have set our sights on the wrong problem, but there are definite signals that can alert us to this possibility. While explaining how to detect and avoid dirty rotten strategies, the authors put the media, healthcare, national security, academia, and organized religion under the microscope. They offer a biting critique that examines the failure of these major institutions to accurately define our most pressing problems. For example, the U.S. healthcare industry strives to be the most technologically advanced in the world, but, our cutting-edge system does not ensure top-quality care to the largest number of people. Readers will find that far too many institutions have enormous incentives to let us devise elaborate solutions to the wrong problems. As Thomas Pynchon said," If they can get you asking the wrong questions, then they don't have to worry about the answers."From a political perspective, this book shows why liberals and conservatives define problems differently, and demonstrates how each political view is incomplete without the other. Our concerns are no longer solely liberal or conservative. In fact, we can no longer trust a single group to define issues across the institutions explored in this book and beyond.Dirty Rotten Strategies is a bipartisan call for anyone who is ready to think outside the box to address our major concerns as a society—starting today.

This book is motivated by the simple hope that the cloud of the global financial crisis may yet have a silver lining—that political leaders, economists, and management scholars might seize this opportunity to reflect critically on the assumptions, practices, and infrastructures that have precipitated the crisis and to imagine and create new forms of organization that sustainably enhance the well-being of global stakeholders.The contributors suggest that aesthetic management, high reliability and crisis management, and sustainability science have much to contribute to the resolution of the collapse that we've witnessed, and to providing enduring lessons for how to structure the institutions of the future. Learning From the Global Financial Crisis devotes a section to each of these areas, offering full-length chapters which explore key issues in depth, as well as shorter commentaries that focus on practical considerations. The chapters progress from micro-level issues that pertain to individuals and teams who act creatively; to the meso-level issues that pertain to the structures, practices, and processes; to the macro-level issues that pertain to the interdependent, ecological systems. Together, the contributions emphasize the importance of developing holistic responses to the financial crisis. The result is a volume that casts new light on traditional economic and managerial theories and policies and provides fresh ideas to a new generation of scholars and practitioners.

Swans, Swine, and Swindlers addresses a core, contemporary question: What steps can we take to better anticipate and manage mega-crises, such as Haiti, Katrina, and 9/11?This book explores the concept of "messes." A mess is a web of complex and dynamically interacting, ill-defined, and/or wicked problems; their solutions; and our conscious and unconscious assumptions, beliefs, emotions, and values. The roots of messes can be classified as Swans (the inability to surface and test false assumptions and mistaken beliefs), Swine (the inability to confront and manage greed, hubris, arrogance, and narcissism), and Swindlers (the inability to confront, detect, and stop unethical and corrupt behavior). Working systematically with this concept and these classifications, authors Can M. Alpaslan and Ian I. Mitroff reveal that all crises are messes; one must learn to understand and manage them as such.They then provide tools and frameworks that readers can use to more effectively deal with the crises of today and tomorrow. Drawing on ideas from research areas as diverse as human development, philosophy, rhetoric, psychology, and high reliability organizations, this book aims to be the definitive guide for a new era in crisis management. Therefore, it is a must-have for practitioners, scholars, and students who study and deal in real-life crises.

The first decade of the 21st century saw a remarkable number of large-scale disasters. Earthquakes in Haiti and Sumatra underscored the serious economic consequences that catastrophic events can have on developing countries, while 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina showed that first world nations remain vulnerable. The Social Roots of Risk argues against the widespread notion that cataclysmic occurrences are singular events, driven by forces beyond our control. Instead, Kathleen Tierney contends that disasters of all types—be they natural, technological, or economic—are rooted in common social and institutional sources. Put another way, risks and disasters are produced by the social order itself—by governing bodies, organizations, and groups that push for economic growth, oppose risk-reducing regulation, and escape responsibility for tremendous losses when they occur. Considering a wide range of historical and looming events—from a potential mega-earthquake in Tokyo that would cause devastation far greater than what we saw in 2011, to BP's accident history prior to the 2010 blowout—Tierney illustrates trends in our behavior, connecting what seem like one-off events to illuminate historical patterns.Like risk, human resilience also emerges from the social order, and this book makes a powerful case that we already have a significant capacity to reduce the losses that disasters produce. A provocative rethinking of the way that we approach and remedy disasters, The Social Roots of Risk leaves readers with a better understanding of how our own actions make us vulnerable to the next big crisis—and what we can do to prevent it.

In 2001, following the events of September 11 and the Anthrax attacks, the United States government began an aggressive campaign to secure the nation against biological catastrophe. Its agenda included building National Biocontainment Laboratories (NBLs), secure facilities intended for research on biodefense applications, at participating universities around the country. In Community at Risk, Thomas D. Beamish examines the civic response to local universities' plans to develop NBLs in three communities: Roxbury, MA; Davis, CA; and Galveston, TX. At a time when the country's anxiety over its security had peaked, reactions to the biolabs ranged from vocal public opposition to acceptance and embrace. He argues that these divergent responses can be accounted for by the civic conventions, relations, and virtues specific to each locale. Together, these elements clustered, providing a foundation for public dialogue. In contrast to conventional micro- and macro-level accounts of how risk is perceived and managed, Beamish's analysis of each case reveals the pivotal role played by meso-level contexts and political dynamics. Community at Risk provides a new framework for understanding risk disputes and their prevalence in American civic life.

How did you first hear about 9/11? What images come to mind when you think of Hurricane Katrina? How did your community react to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting? You likely have your own stories about these tragic events. Yet, as a society, we rarely stop to appreciate the narratives that follow a crisis and their tremendous impact.This book examines the fundamental role that narratives play in catastrophic events. A crisis creates a communication vacuum, which is then populated by the stories of those who were directly affected, as well as crisis managers, journalists, and onlookers. These stories become fundamental to how we understand a disaster, determine what should be done about it, and carry forward our lessons learned.Matthew W. Seeger and Timothy L. Sellnow outline a typology of crisis narratives: accounts of blame, stories of renewal, victim narratives, heroic tales, and memorials. Using cases to illustrate each type, they show how competing accounts battle for dominance in the public sphere, advancing specific organizational, social, and political changes. Narratives of Crisis improves our understanding of how consensus forms in the aftermath of a disaster, providing a new lens for comprehending events in our past and shaping what comes from those in our future.

The first decade of the 21st century saw a remarkable number of large-scale disasters. Earthquakes in Haiti and Sumatra underscored the serious economic consequences that catastrophic events can have on developing countries, while 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina showed that first world nations remain vulnerable. The Social Roots of Risk argues against the widespread notion that cataclysmic occurrences are singular events, driven by forces beyond our control. Instead, Kathleen Tierney contends that disasters of all types—be they natural, technological, or economic—are rooted in common social and institutional sources. Put another way, risks and disasters are produced by the social order itself—by governing bodies, organizations, and groups that push for economic growth, oppose risk-reducing regulation, and escape responsibility for tremendous losses when they occur. Considering a wide range of historical and looming events—from a potential mega-earthquake in Tokyo that would cause devastation far greater than what we saw in 2011, to BP's accident history prior to the 2010 blowout—Tierney illustrates trends in our behavior, connecting what seem like one-off events to illuminate historical patterns.Like risk, human resilience also emerges from the social order, and this book makes a powerful case that we already have a significant capacity to reduce the losses that disasters produce. A provocative rethinking of the way that we approach and remedy disasters, The Social Roots of Risk leaves readers with a better understanding of how our own actions make us vulnerable to the next big crisis—and what we can do to prevent it.

Increasingly, scholars view reliability—the ability to plan for and withstand disaster—as a social construction. However, there is a tendency to evoke this concept only in the face of catastrophes, such as the British Petroleum oil spill or the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. This book frames reliability as a fundamental issue in the study of organizations—one that can also improve day-to-day operations.Bringing together a diverse cast of contributors, it considers how we can account for the ability of some organizations to maintain high reliability and what we can learn from them. The chapters distinguish reliability from related lines of inquiry; take stock of relevant research from different disciplinary perspectives; highlight implications for practice; and identify directions, questions, and priorities for future research. The first of its kind in over twenty years, this volume delivers a dynamic base of shared knowledge and an integrative research agenda at a time when organizational reliability has never been so important.

On February 27, 2010, Chile was rocked by a violent earthquake five hundred times more powerful than the one that hit Haiti just six weeks prior. The Chilean earthquake devastated schools, hospitals, roads, and homes, paralyzing the country for weeks and causing economic damage that was equal to 18 percent of Chile's GDP. This calamity hit just as an incumbent political regime was packing its bags and a new administration was preparing to take office. For most countries, it would have taken years, if not decades, to recover from such an event. Yet, only one year later, Chile's economy had reached a six percent annual growth rate.In Leadership Dispatches, Michael Useem, Howard Kunreuther, and Erwann Michel-Kerjan look at how the nation's leaders—in government, business, religion, academia, and beyond—facilitated Chile's recovery. They attribute Chile's remarkable comeback to a two-part formula consisting of strong national leadership on the one hand, and deeply rooted institutional practices on the other. Coupled with strategic, deliberative thinking, these levers enabled Chile to bounce back quickly and exceed its prior national performance. The authors make the case that the Chilean story contains lessons for a broad range of organizations and governments the world over. Large-scale catastrophes of many kinds—from technological meltdowns to disease pandemics—have been on the rise in recent years. Now is the time to seek ideas and guidance from other leaders who have triumphed in the wake of a disaster. In this vein, Leadership Dispatches is both a remarkable story of resilience and an instructive look at how those with the greatest responsibility for a country, company, or community should lead.

The safe and continued functioning of critical infrastructures—such as electricity, natural gas, transportation, and water—is a social imperative. Yet the complex connections between these systems render them increasingly precarious. Furthermore, though we depend so heavily on interconnected infrastructures, we do not fully understand the risks involved in their failure.Emery Roe and Paul R. Schulman argue that designs, policies, and laws often overlook the knowledge and experiences of those who manage these systems on the ground—reliability professionals who have vital insights that would be invaluable to planning. To combat this major blind spot, the athors construct a new theoretical perspective that reveals how to make sense of complex interconnected networks and improve reliability through management, regulation, and political leadership. To illustrate their approach in action, they present a multi-year case study of one of the world's most important "infrastructure crossroads," the San Francisco Bay-Delta. Reliability and Risk advances our understanding of what it takes to ensure the dependability of the intricate—and sometimes hazardous—systems on which we rely every day.

How did you first hear about 9/11? What images come to mind when you think of Hurricane Katrina? How did your community react to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting? You likely have your own stories about these tragic events. Yet, as a society, we rarely stop to appreciate the narratives that follow a crisis and their tremendous impact.This book examines the fundamental role that narratives play in catastrophic events. A crisis creates a communication vacuum, which is then populated by the stories of those who were directly affected, as well as crisis managers, journalists, and onlookers. These stories become fundamental to how we understand a disaster, determine what should be done about it, and carry forward our lessons learned.Matthew W. Seeger and Timothy L. Sellnow outline a typology of crisis narratives: accounts of blame, stories of renewal, victim narratives, heroic tales, and memorials. Using cases to illustrate each type, they show how competing accounts battle for dominance in the public sphere, advancing specific organizational, social, and political changes. Narratives of Crisis improves our understanding of how consensus forms in the aftermath of a disaster, providing a new lens for comprehending events in our past and shaping what comes from those in our future.