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"Technology is a technique or complex of techniques employed to alter “materials” (human or nonhuman, mental or physical) in an anticipated manner."
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Charles PerrowNormal Accidents contributed key concepts to a set of intellectual dev — Charles Perrow
"Normal Accidents contributed key concepts to a set of intellectual developments in the 1980s that revolutionized the conception of safety and risk. It made the case for examining technological failures as the product of highly interacting systems, and highlighted organizational and management factors as the main causes of failures. Technological disasters could no longer be ascribed to isolated equipment malfunction, operator error or acts of God... Perrow concluded that the failure at Three Mile Island was a consequence of the systems immense complexity. Such modern high-risk systems, he realized, were prone to failures however well they were managed. It was inevitable that they would eventually suffer what he termed a normal accident. Therefore, he suggested, we might do better to contemplate a radical redesign, or if that was not possible, to abandon such technology entirely."
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Charles Perrow
Charles Perrow
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Charles Bryce Perrow, or Chick Perrow was an American sociologist and a leading figure of organizational sociology. He spent most of his career at SUNY Stony Brook and Yale University as a professor of sociology. He authored several books and many articles on organizations, including Normal Accidents, and was primarily concerned with the impact of large organizations on society.
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"For many purposes of organizational analysis technology might not be an independent variable but a dependent one."
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Charles PerrowQuote
"In a modern society, where large organizations have acquired unprecedented importance, social scientists have increasingly sought to understand the nature of organizational goals - what they are, what shapes or determines them, what their impact is upon the environment, and how they change."
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Charles PerrowQuote
"Covers the history and tradition, the precedents and established commitments involved in all past action. These limit, though not determine, the present actions that any one group may take. If any single thing deserved the designation “the institution” or “the hospital” it would be this.”"
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Charles PerrowQuote
"Some of these by-products [of official goals] may become so important to the participants who make up the institution as to constitute unofficial goals. “I would not be interested in this hospital unless it...” did something or other. “The trouble with this place is everyone is so concerned with” this or that pursuit. Where these blanks are not filled in with good patient care, teaching and research we have unofficial goals of some group or individual, and thus we have uses to which the institution is put other than the avowed ones."
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Charles PerrowQuote
"Multiple leadership, as a stable system of goal determination and policy setting, is most likely to be found in organizations where there are multiple goals and where these goals lack precise criteria of achievement and allow considerable tolerances with regard to achievement. Organizations with a single goal [i.e., proprietary hospitals] or a clear hierarchy of goals provide little basis for multiple leadership. Multiple leadership arises because important group interests diverge, and each group has the power to protect its interests."
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Charles Perrow