Disaster Dynamics: Understanding the Role of Quantity in Organizational Collapse

Abstract

Yates, seminar participants at Harvard, MIT, and Boston College, three anonymous reviewers, the associate editor, Joe Porac, and the managing editor, Linda Johanson.This article examines the role that the quantity of nonnovel events plays in precipitating disaster through the development of a formal (mathematical) system-dynamics model. Building on existing case studies of disaster, we develop a general theory of how an organizational system responds to an on-going stream of non-novel interruptions to existing plans and procedures. We show how an overaccumulation of interruptions can shift an organizational system from a resilient, self-regulating regime, which offsets the effects of this accumulation, to a fragile, self-escalating regime that amplifies them. We offer a new characterization of the conditions under which organizations may be prone to major disasters caused by an accumulation of minor interruptions. Our analysis provides both theoretical insights into the causes of organizational crises and practical suggestions for those charged with preventing them.-Major disasters have long 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 events responsible for immeasurable human suffering and environmental damage. There are few more compelling opportunities for organization theory specifically, and the social sciences in general, to prevent suffering and contribute to humanity. Moreover, major disasters provide a unique opportunity to study organizational processes in situations that are far from equilibrium. Just as the designers of bridges and airplanes test their systems under extreme conditions that are rarely, if ever, 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 on disaster and its flip side, safety, includes indepth case studies (e.g., Shrivastava, 1987; Weick, 1993b; Vaughan, 1996), studies of learning from accidents and error (e.g., Cook and Woods, 1994;Carroll, 1995), theories of highhazard 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 how to manage accident and error (e.g., Reason, 1997). A significant insight emerging from this literature is that major disasters often do not have proportionately large causes. Theorists increasingly recognize that small events can link together in unexpected ways to create disproportionate and disastrous effects (Weick, 1993a; Perrow, 1994; Vaughan, 1996; Reason, 1997). Perrow (1984) suggested that as production technologies become increasingly sophisticated and interconnected with other systems, the likelihood of chain reactions, in which one problem reverberates t...

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