Perrow (1984, “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies”) noted that tightly coupled systems are more prone to accidents.
Population ecologists (Hannan, M. T. and J. Freeman, 1977, “The Population Ecology of Organizations” ) tell us that specialization is a response to the demands for efficiency. Specialization leads to increasing interconnectedness and interdependency; in other words tight coupling.
The near collapse of the world financial system this fall, a crisis brought about by a very small perturbation (only 2% of mortgages are in foreclosure), seems to be a good example of a normal accident.
As firms increasingly outsource and reduce buffers between system elements in the quest for efficiency, are we going to see similar accidents in other sectors I wonder?
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