“Risk Can Be Identified and Controlled. Therefore All Industrial Disasters Are Preventable.” Discuss.
“Risk can be identified and controlled. Therefore all industrial disasters are preventable.” Discuss.
This essay discusses the apparently logical proposition that if risk can be identified and controlled, industrial disasters are preventable. It first examines the concepts of ‘risk’, ‘identification and control’, ‘disaster’ and ‘preventable’ before examining the nature of the industrial disaster through a systems approach; it will be shown that a disaster can be deconstructed in order to present a series of ‘hooks’ on which preventative action could be taken. However, the nature of the system and organizational culture in which it operates prohibits those lessons from being applied. Furthermore, not only are there limits to lessons, or isomorphic learning, the nature of industrial technology is such that accidents are unavoidable. The essay concludes by arguing that the efforts of risk managers should not be focused so much on preventing disasters, but on withstanding them.
There is ‘no clear and commonly agreed definition of what the term “risk” actually means.’ (Hood and Jones, 1996: 2). The 1992 Royal Society Report outlines the debate over whether risk should be analyzed using quantitative or qualitative methods. Favoured by engineers and mathematicians, risk may be understood quantitatively as ‘a combination of the probability, or frequency, of occurrence of a defined hazard and the magnitude of the consequences of the occurrence.’ (Warner, 1992: 4). However, this approach has been criticized for being too narrow because it ‘imposes unduly restrictive assumptions about what is an essentially human and social phenomenon.’ (Pidgeon et al., 1992: 89). Rather, one should understand the ‘risk’ archipelago as being comprised of technological, social and natural hazards, which overlap and create hybrid hazards, to be understood through the multiple sub-disciplines of study (Hood et al., 1992; Hood and Jones, 1996). To that end risk is better
This essay discusses the apparently logical proposition that if risk can be identified and controlled, industrial disasters are preventable. It first examines the concepts of ‘risk’, ‘identification and control’, ‘disaster’ and ‘preventable’ before examining the nature of the industrial disaster through a systems approach; it will be shown that a disaster can be deconstructed in order to present a series of ‘hooks’ on which preventative action could be taken. However, the nature of the system and organizational culture in which it operates prohibits those lessons from being applied. Furthermore, not only are there limits to lessons, or isomorphic learning, the nature of industrial technology is such that accidents are unavoidable. The essay concludes by arguing that the efforts of risk managers should not be focused so much on preventing disasters, but on withstanding them.
There is ‘no clear and commonly agreed definition of what the term “risk” actually means.’ (Hood and Jones, 1996: 2). The 1992 Royal Society Report outlines the debate over whether risk should be analyzed using quantitative or qualitative methods. Favoured by engineers and mathematicians, risk may be understood quantitatively as ‘a combination of the probability, or frequency, of occurrence of a defined hazard and the magnitude of the consequences of the occurrence.’ (Warner, 1992: 4). However, this approach has been criticized for being too narrow because it ‘imposes unduly restrictive assumptions about what is an essentially human and social phenomenon.’ (Pidgeon et al., 1992: 89). Rather, one should understand the ‘risk’ archipelago as being comprised of technological, social and natural hazards, which overlap and create hybrid hazards, to be understood through the multiple sub-disciplines of study (Hood et al., 1992; Hood and Jones, 1996). To that end risk is better
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