Major disasters have prolonged interested organization theorists (Perrow.

Major disasters have prolonged interested organization theorists (Perrow, 1984; Shrivastava, 1987; Weick, 1993b; Vaughan, 1996) and their causes continue to be an active area of inquiry. Accidents like the nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl or Union Carbide's gas leak at Bhopal are major social consequences responsible for immeasurable human suffering and environmental damage. There are hardly any more compelling opportunities for organization theory specifically, and the social sciences in general, to obstruct suffering and contribute to humanity. Moreover, major disasters provide a unique opportunity to close attention organizational processes in situations that are far from equilibrium. Just as the designers of bridges and airplanes standard their systems under extreme conditions that are rarely, if at any time experienced during actual use, major catastrophes provide a similar opportunity to learn more about the vulnerability and resilience of human and social systems

The literature forward disaster and its flip side, safety, includes in-depth case studies (eg Shrivastava, 1987; Weick, 1993b; Vaughan, 1996) studies of learning from accidents and error (eg prepare for the table and Woods, 1994; Carroll, 1995) theories of high-hazard or accident-prone organizations (Turner 1976; Sagan, 1993; Perrow 1994) theories of high-reliability organizations (Roberts, 1990; Schulman, 1993; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 1999) and theories of by what mode to manage accident and error (eg Reason, 1997) A significant insight emerging from this literature is that major disasters frequently do not have proportionately large causes. Theorists increasingly recognize that small ends can link together in unexpect ways to create disproportionate and disastrous tenors (Weick, 1 993a; Perrow, 1994; Vaughan, 1996; Reason, 1997) Perrow (1984) indicateed that as production technologies become increasingly sophisticated and interconnected with other bodys the likelihood of chain reactions, in which undivided problem re verberates through the rule and triggers a cascade of malfunctions and breakdowns, greatly increases the chance that minor, everyday conclusions will lead to major disasters, or what he called "normal accidents."

An important implication of Perrow's normal-accident theory is that complication tightly coupled systems often bring into being cues that are either invisible or contemn existing categories. The challenges of managing similar events are acknowledged both according to proponents of this high-hazard view and those in the countervailing high-reliability academy (cf. Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 1999) While the brace schools disagree on the ability of organizations to handle this challenge, they the pair emphasize the central role of novel marked occurrences in precipitating crisis. In situations ranging from anomalous 0-ring data leading to the space shuttle disaster (Vaughan, 1996) to a wandering bear almost precipitating nuclear war (Sagan, 1993) novel results that challenge conventional categorization or answer often play an important character in major disasters.

the pair social psychological and sociological analyses of disasters repeatedly focus on the processes by the and of which novel events are sens and resolv For example, organizations fail to perceive novelty when it is embedded or obscur through complex technology (Perrow, 1994), when the complexity of the external environment outstrips the organization's ability to feeling it (Weick, 1993a), or when the novelty is for a like reason extreme that it cannot be accommodated in the existing worldview (Weick, 1993b) Similarly, equal when novelty is perceived, it is repeatedly suppressed, particularly when acknowledging it undermines existing organizational goals or norms (Turner 1978; Shrivastava et al., 1988; Vaughan, 1996) Policy prescriptions emerging from these literatures include widening attention and conceptual categories; simplifying complexity, in addition doubting those simplifications; and being willing to reframe perceptions onward the fly (Carroll, 1995; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 1999)

Highlighting novelty as a basis for disaster exhibits an important intellectual milestone in understanding organizations and their vulnerabilities. Like all powerful analytical approaches, however, it has l to blind stains (cf. Weick, 1979). A careful reading of existing work moves that in many cases one as well as the other the novelty and the quantity of interruptions to established routines and expectations play a significant part in precipitating disaster. For example, the anomalous O-ring performance (novelty) that ultimately caused the Challenger disaster was just common of many outstanding risk-tolerance issues (quantity) that had to be resolv within an allotted time (Vaughan, 1996) Similarly, the bear mistaken for a Soviet saboteur (novelty) happened to record the compound at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, while U soldiers were carrying revealed the numerous tasks needed to mobilize bombers (quantity) in anticipation of nuclear war (Sagan, 1993) besides despite its frequent appearance in situations that ultimat ely completion in disaster, the role of quantity has received relatively little attention.