# Safety Organised Criticality

*Tom Geraghty · Safety & Human Error, Complexity & Systems, Ecological Thinking*

Introduces Self-Organised Criticality (SOC) and applies it to organisational failure. Argues that small, local interactions accumulate over time — like dry fuel in a forest — until an invisible threshold is crossed and a seemingly small event triggers disproportionate collapse.

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## Connected concepts (8)

- [How Complex Systems Fail: Being a Short Treatise on the Nature of Failure, How Failure is Evaluated, How Failure is Attributed to Proximate Cause, and the Resulting New Understanding of Patient Safety](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/cook-1998.md) (paper)
- [Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/perrow-1984.md) (paper)
- [A Leader's Framework for Decision Making](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/snowden-boone-2007.md) (paper)
- [Complexity](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/complexity.md)
- [Experimental Evidence for Tipping Points in Social Convention](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/centola-et-al-2018.md) (paper)
- [The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/weick-1993-manngulch.md) (paper)
- [Adaptive Cycle](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/the-adaptive-cycle-and-self-organised-criticality.md)
- [Normal Accidents](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/normal-accidents.md)