Following up on my previous post about the Gulf oil spill, Normal Accidents?, here is a guest contribution by Charles Perrow, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Yale University, and author of the classic book Normal Accidents. This post is adapted from the preface to the forthcoming paperback edition of Perrow’s 2007 book The Next Catastrophe: [...]
As I write, the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf is once again gushing unchecked as BP tries to install a new cap that could end the spillage. A recurrent theme in the discussion of this massive spill is that we shouldn’t trust “fail-safe” technologies or the experts who reassure us that catastrophes cannot happen. [...]
A business school perspective on the forces that shape perspectives on climate change
By David L. Levy
Progress toward building a coalition supportive of aggressive action on climate change seems to have become mired in spring mud. In an earlier posting, I discussed the sudden change in climate in the wake of “climategate”, the cold winter in [...]
by David L. Levy
Managing crises in complex systems
Just when the world was beginning to wake up to the climate change crisis, with a flood of new evidence on the accelerating meltdown of glaciers and polar ice caps, the financial crisis struck. Paul Gilding has termed this convergence of twin crises “The Great Disruption.” At first [...]
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