Under the influence of neo-liberal ideals such as New Public Management, the ownership, operation, and maintenance of many Critical Infrastructures have been divided among an increasing number of public as well as private actors. Limited research has investigated the role of this institutional fragmentation for shaping resilience of Critical Infrastructures, especially in relation to recovery after infrastructure failures. The aim of this paper is to empirically explore interorganisational challenges to response and recovery operations in the increasingly multi-actor setting characterising many contemporary Critical Infrastructures. Using the Swedish railway system as a case, the paper explores response and recovery operations following two frequent types of events. The findings show that once disruptions occur, response and recovery operations are often complicated and time-consuming. Multiple actors with diverse roles and mandates are involved in the operations, which prompts a need for communication and coordination. The case study also illustrates the important role of contractual arrangements for shaping resilience of deregulated Critical Infrastructures. The contracts incentivise actors to certain behaviours, but they also give rise to unintended side-effects. While individual actors typically make adaptations and goal tradeoffs with regards to their individual tasks and actions in a way that is both locally rational and efficient, interconnections and interdependencies among the different actors give rise to cross-scale challenges to stimulating resilient operations of the infrastructure system as a whole.
Public and private actors with critical roles for ensuring societal safety need to work proactively to reduce risks and vulnerabilities. Traditionally, risk management activities have often been performed in order to ensure continuous functioning of key societal services. Recently, however, business continuity management (BCM), and its analytical subcomponent business impact assessment (BIA), has been introduced and used more extensively by both the private and public sector in order to increase the robustness and resilience of critical infrastructures and societal functions and services. BCM was originally developed in the business sector but has received a broader use during the last decade. Yet, BCM/BIA has gained limited attention in the scientific literature-especially when it comes to clarifying and developing its conceptual basis. First, this article examines and discusses the conceptual foundation of BCM concepts, including practical challenges of applying the concepts. Based on recent conceptual developments from the field of risk management, a developed conceptualization is suggested. Second, the article discusses challenges that arise when applying BCM in the societal safety area and provides some recommendations aiming to improve the clarity and quality of applications. Third, the article provides suggestions of how to integrate the overlapping approaches of BIA and risk assessment in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness of proactive, analytic processes. We hope that the article can stimulate a critical discussion about the key concepts of BCM, their wider use in societal safety, and their connection to other concepts and activities such as risk assessment.
In many industries, a national accident investigation board conducts investigations following major accidents. For safety improvements to be achieved, however, it is essential that the recommendations presented in these investigations are followed by necessary actions. In this paper, challenges related to implementation of recommendations from accident investigations are studied. The theoretical framework providing the foundation for the study lies at the intersection between systems safety, risk governance, and implementation research. Empirical data for the case study was collected from the Swedish railway sector. The first part of the paper presents an analysis of the extent of recommendations that have not resulted in implemented actions. The second part consists of an interview study aiming at providing a deeper understanding of the difficulties related to transforming these recommendations into actual changes. Two key factors that give rise to challenges to implementation of recommendations are identified. The first factor is related to the different actors' views on their own and other stakeholders' roles in the implementation process, and can be described as a trade-off between being insider and outsider to the industry. The second factor is related to the scope of the accident investigations and their recommendations, and can be described as a trade-off between micro-level and macro-level factors. The opportunities for implementing recommendations, and achieving safety improvements at the industry level, are affected by the ways in which the different stakeholders manage these trade-offs at the local level. This study thus mainly contributes by highlighting the importance of co-ordinating the various actors involved in the implementation process, and the results show that challenges to implementation to a large extent arise in the interactions between these actors. This document should be referenced: Cedergren, A., 2013. Implementing recommendations from accident investigations: a case study of inter--organisational challenges, Accident Analysis and Prevention 53, 133--141.
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