August 8: Normal Accidents, High Reliability, Wicked Messes

[David Ing]

If you haven't seen the 1979 movie, The China Syndrome, maybe you'll want to catch in on CTV Movies.  This Academy Award winning film was released 12 days before the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. 

For the second Monday in August, we're resurfacing the original format for Systems Thinking Ontario, where we're review some prior research papers.  In this case, we'll be following through the evolution of ideas with:

• Normal Accidents;
• High Reliability Organizations; and
• Wicked Messes

Normal Accidents were also called "system accidents" by sociologist Charles Perrow.  The 1984 was started by Perrow writing a report on Three Mile Island.  Some years later, he was also contributed to the 9/11 commission. 

Is this a line of research that we should remember?  Or has everyone forgotten it?  

See more at https://wiki.st-on.org/2021-08-09 .  Sign up for the web link at https://normal-accidents-st-on.eventbrite.ca

[David Ing]

Sorry, finger slip!  Monday is August 9.