This Sociological Theory Explains Why Wall Street Is Rigged for Crisis - Bill Davidow -... - 0 views
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near brush with nuclear catastrophe, brought on by a single foraging bear, is an example of what sociologist Charles Perrow calls a “normal accident.” These frightening incidents are “normal” not because they happen often, but because they are almost certain to occur in any tightly connected complex system.
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Normal accidents, like these, occur because two or more independent failures happen and interact in unpredictable ways. After studying calamities such as the Three Mile Island meltdown, explosions at chemical plants, and ships colliding in the open sea, Perrow observed that safety mechanisms put in place to make the systems safer in fact frequently trigger the final failure.
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errow stresses the role that human error and mismanagement play in these scenarios. The important lesson: failures in complex systems are caused not only by the hardware and software problems but by people and their motivations.
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