Spurgin Anthony J. - Decision-making in high risk organizations under stress conditions

DECISION-MAKING IN
HIGH RISK ORGANIZATIONS
UNDER STRESS CONDITIONS

ANTHONY J. SPURGIN AND DAVID W. STUPPLES

CRC Press

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2017 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

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Version Date: 20160317

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-4987-2122-6 (Hardback)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Spurgin, Anthony J., author. | Stupples, David W., author.
Title: Decision-making in high risk organizations under stress conditions /
Anthony J. Spurgin and David W. Stupples.
Description: 1 Edition. | Boca Raton : Taylor & Francis Group, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016000967 | ISBN 9781498721226 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Decision making. | Job stress. | Management.
Classification: LCC HD30.23 .S7217 2016 | DDC 658.4/03--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000967

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NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne 1573-1631

We have been interested in the occurrence of accidents and the relationships of organizational operations to the accidents. Potentially a lot more can be done to reduce the number and severity of accidents. In this, we have been confirmed in the study of ranges of accidents that have occurred in different industries and countries. Our studies in this field are reflected in this book.

The world is strongly affected by accidentsfrom local incidents to more global accidents that lead to the deaths of thousands of people and economic stresses in impacted countries The accidents range from a single death because of a traffic accident to a whole country affected by the arrival of a tsunami that destroys houses, kills hundreds of people, and floods the countryside with salt water that restricts the capability of the land to produce food for the population, possibly leading to hunger and malnourishment for years.

History tells us that every country is affected by accidents, and it appears that we cannot escape from being burdened by these events occurring and affecting us, individually, with pain and financial hardship.

We have been involved in the study of organizations and the impact of accidents on organizations. The idea of an accident being a random event over which we have no control and are in no way capable of preventing is an undesirable one. Closer examination of accidents reveals that if different decisions were made, better studies carried out, and the attitude of key persons were open to think more clearly about the likely consequence of actions, then the probability of an accident occurring could be heavily reduced.

The managers of more complex systems are required to be better prepared than for simple systems. From our background in the study of systems and related accidents, we have become more aware that the frequency of accidents in all kinds of situations can be reduced. It may not be totally possible to eliminate all accidents, because one lacks the ability to control everyone and everything. However, one can develop methods and techniques to enable persons directing and carrying out actions to minimize the potential for inadvertent decisions and actions being taken that lead to accidents.

This philosophy flies in the face of the normal approach to accidents (Perrow, 1999). Perrows model seems very much influenced by the Three Mile Island accident sequence. His point was that as people make mistakes, big accidents have small beginnings and failures are those of organizations. The main idea is that failures are built into societys complex and tightly coupled systems, and as such accidents are unavoidable and cannot be designed around. We believe that organizations can be helped to reduce the probability of accidents and we lay out the processes here to accomplish this.

Our reanalysis constructs a different view of an accident (see ). Our studies of a variety of accidents indicate that there are key events in most accident sequences where if the key decisions are approached differently, it would be very likely that the accident would not occur. In the field of accident analyses, there are parallel situations in which one decision path leads to failure and another path leads to success. This shows that it is not inevitable that a single failure will lead to an accident. The awareness of the decision-maker of an undesirable situation can be increased by being subject to better background training. This training should make a difference and lead to a reduced probability of a situation escalating to a damaging accident. It is better to avoid an accident than try to recover from the effects of an accident progression. The progression of an accident can tend to obscure the root causes of the accident and make it much more difficult for the organization to recover.