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Normal Accidents

Tom Geraghty · Safety & Human Error, Complexity & Systems

Summarises Charles Perrow's Normal Accident Theory: that in tightly coupled, complex systems, accidents are a near-inevitable systemic output, not a human failure. Shows how measures intended to improve resilience can inadvertently increase complexity — and therefore risk.

Connected concepts (16)

• Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (paper)
• Organizing for High Reliability: Processes of Collective Mindfulness (paper)
• Risk Management in a Dynamic Society: A Modelling Problem (paper)
• The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (paper)
• Working in Practice But Not in Theory: Theoretical Challenges of "High-Reliability Organizations" (paper)
• Normalisation of Deviance (Challenger)
• Why Hospitals Don't Learn from Failures: Organizational and Dynamics That Inhibit System Change (paper)
• Collective Mind in Organizations: Heedful Interrelating on Flight Decks (paper)
• The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster (paper)
• The Cost of Silence: Normalization of Deviance and Groupthink (paper)
• Dr Richard Cook
• Human Error & PS
• Resilience Engineering
• Safety I & Safety II
• Swiss Cheese Model
• Safety Organised Criticality