“Risk can be identified and controlled. Therefore all industrial disasters are preventable.” Discuss.
This essay discusses the apparently logical proposition that if risk can be identified and controlled, industrial disasters are preventable. It first examines the concepts of ‘risk’, ‘identification and control’, ‘disaster’ and ‘preventable’ before examining the nature of the industrial disaster through a systems approach; it will be shown that a disaster can be deconstructed in order to present a series of ‘hooks’ on which preventative action could be taken. However, the nature of the system and organizational culture in which it operates prohibits those lessons from being applied. Furthermore, not only are there limits to lessons,
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This systems approach seeks to identify lessons in order to predict future disasters within industry because of the isomorphic nature of these systems. From an organizational perspective, Toft and Reynolds (2005 cited in Module 1, Unit 5: 5.6) argued that although disasters are low frequency events when viewed in the context of one organization, managers could benefit from isomorphic foresight if they viewed incidents which occurred across the whole industry and learned from one another, where organizations and/or operations are similar. Thus, given the availability of theoretical models and empirical evidence, it would appear to be a rational assertion that industrial disasters could be prevented because industry could learn from its own experiences. However, there are a number of barriers to this, both in general and specifically, due to limitations on isomorphic learning.
The first general issue of reductionism (Elliott, 2000). There may be a tendency to take a simple approach to causes of disasters (Richardson, 1994) reducing them to simplistic activity or blame; this diverts attention away from emergent properties, or previously unforeseen system interactions (Elliott, 2000) and inhibits a holistic approach which would otherwise consider the range of political, economic and
MMA could train their employees properly by investing in internal worker training programs which would cater to educating workers on proper safety procedures. This will ensure that both the employees and the company are in good standing (771.v and 77.1.iii). MMA could also conduct scheduled maintenance to ensure that all their train and equipment, including tracks are fit to be on the rail roads and are in great condition as opposed to the marginal conditions which constituted to the disaster. This would help to correct the issues they have with safety management and thus put the company in good standing as per – 77.1.ii and 77.2.i.
A high level of interconnectedness between system components, reliance on indirect information sources, an unpredictable environment, or incomprehensibility of a system to its operators indicates complexity within a system (Perrow, 1999). Since systems are designed, run and built by humans, they cannot be perfect. Every part of the system is subject to failure; the design can be faulty, as can the equipment, the procedures, the operators, the supplies, and the environment. Since nothing is perfect, humans build in safeguards, such as redundancies, buffers, and alarms that tell operators to take corrective action. But occasionally two or more failures can interact in ways that could not be anticipated. These unexpected interactions of failures can defeat the safeguards, and if the system is also “tightly coupled” thus allowing failures to cascade, it can bring down a part or all of system. The vulnerability to unexpected interactions that defeat safety systems is an inherent part of highly complex systems; they cannot avoid this (Perrow, 1984).
Chaucer's ability to characterize people from all walks of life in explicit detail, as is so wonderfully displayed in The Canterbury Tales, is just one factor that allowed him to be known as one of history's finest literary artists. At the end of a career that would be considered by most artists as an extremely successful one, what could have caused Chaucer to apologize for any of the works which defined literary success? In "Chaucer's Retraction," which appears at the end of The Canterbury Tales (Norton 311), Chaucer not only apologizes for several of his secular works, he also goes so far as to revoke them, and ask for forgiveness for such works which "tended toward sin" (313), as he puts it.
‘Natural disasters are often not natural disasters, but in fact human disasters. Discuss this statement according to seismic events’
Beck explains that our society, encapsulated within an era of advanced modernity, is dominated by the pervasiveness of risks. Bell provides an in-depth examination of the relationship and tension between ‘rational’ conceptions of risk and the democracy of knowledge. Rather than a new feature of modern industrial society, Bell argues that the problem of using wording like "risk" represents a modern conceptual language for discussing the age-old problems of uncertainty and control. The modern day thought process in regards to hazards and their risk, is not about the number of hazards we face or the degree of uncertainty but rather the language we use to think and talk about them. Bell titles this as highly rationalistic (p. 238). Bell states
Imagine living your life on a regular day for you and BOOM! Your life is now suddenly completely changed, everything you thought was normal or part of you has changed. This is what natural disasters tend to make happen in your life, they affect us in many ways. In this essay i will discuss the various elements each author uses to express the causes and effects of disasters. The author Jacqueline Adam clearly expresses the causes and effects of disasters through the use of text structure, choice of vocabulary and use of data and details.
English textile factories were unsafe for the health of working families based on interviews by the House of Lords investigating if factories were safe or unsafe.During Dr.Wards interview he quotes “the state of the health of the cotton-factory children is much worse than that of children employed in other manufactories”.Dr.Ward has also witnessed the injuries of the children of the factory.In Edward Baines interview he says “there have been instances of abuse and cruelty in soe of the manufactoring.Investigations were made by the factory commisioners.John Birley as a kid working in the factory was asked about their treatment working in the factory and they answered as they were told knowing what would happen if they told the truth.Even though
Chapter nine of Reading In Risk examines the risks involved with the amelioration of other risks. Although we are in the safest time period in history as a culture we seem preoccupied with risks and their reduction. Though on the surface this seems like a good thing how do we decide what risks to concentrate on, not all of them will happen. A further consideration to account for is that by using resources we deplete future resources to deal with the shocks that were caused by risks we did not address or novel ones that arose because we displaced the risk instead of reducing the net risk. This is problematic for government agencies because they often disagree on important risk reduction strategies since they are focused on various risks and
Halloween is an international holiday that is celebrated every year on the 31st of October. Halloween is a holiday that consists of a history of traditions that have been evolved to fit more modern times. Halloween is considered an ancient tradition that was once religious. Halloween has a rich history and has influenced thousands of cultures throughout the 2,000 years that the holiday has been in practice.
Major disasters can happen anywhere in the world. Further, intelligence sharing, freelance journalists, and News networks, allows for the damage of isolated disasters to be viewed in every country. Sensationalized incidents such as the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, highlights a systemic failure within government due to its failure to regulate private companies. Public outcry from the disaster prompts world leaders to make immediate changes within its emergency disaster guidelines.
In the Canterbury tales written by Chaucer, Chaucer uses them to describe his own position about the society he lives in. Chaucer lived in England during the 1300s-1400s, in which these times dealt with the church a lot. So, knowing that, Chaucer used a lot of his own beliefs and thoughts in his writings. He talks about The Monk, the Friar, the Summoner, and the Pardoner about how corrupt they were with the church. The Canterbury tales were used to expose the corruption of the Church’s, that’s how Chaucer wanted to bring this to light.
As the Marxist approach puts it, “underlying states of human marginalisation are conceived as the principle cause of disaster.” (Pelling, 2001, p. 179). This resource exclusion to particular categories of people within society creates their vulnerability to risk, and in turn disaster. McLaughlin and Dietz (2007) suggest there are three dimensions that make up vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity and resilience. An example displaying the vulnerability of lower classed social categories is in North Bihar, India, where floods have been managed through engineering works to create embankments. While the Government appears to be reducing the hazard, this has increased the vulnerability of the local people. Soil fertility has decreased reducing agricultural success, dangerous flash floods are occurring due to embankment walls collapsing and communities have settled on apparently safe embankments and are now highly exposed (Pelling, 2001). The natural flood hazard was dangerous, but these works by society have created a natural disaster (Pelling, 2001). Power inequalities have created this disastrous situation where lower classes are at high exposure to floods due to profit hungry management bodies. This technological approach is clearly failing but the Government and other managing groups make large profits off flood engineering works and have the power to decide how to control the issue (Pelling, 2001). This has resulted in creating
The image as well as the operational business reputation of a corporation is critical to the survivability of the corporation in today’s business world. Today we will put our focus on one of UK’s largest multinational oils company’s. In the case with British Petroleum (BP) as it actively explores oil in 26 countries around the world, due to BP’s lack of focus on the safety issues presented in the 2004 Telos Group report coupled with the oversight and control to correct safety hazards, the Texas plant experienced a disastrous fire and explosion killing 15 workers and injuring 180 other personnel as stated by Halbert and Ingulli (2012, pg. 185) An investigation by the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board released a report in 2007 that revealed process safety leadership issues starting with senior management as well as disregarding safety concerns throughout BP. This paper will attempt to look at various details of the Critical Success Factor of British Petroleum (BP). We will then determine how these factors impact the success of the firm through project benefits, risk culture and organizational readiness. In this paper we will also provide project risk recommendations that will allow companies to plan accordingly when dealing with risk management task this way they will focus more on responsibilities, safety activities and budget. Lastly, we will create and identify checklist based on the categories of risk.
In his book, “What is a disaster?” Quarantelli asked five researchers with different social science background (Gilbert, Dombrowsky, Kreps, Porfiriev and Horlick-Jones) to define the term disaster. Unsurprisingly, all the scholars defined disasters differently (Rosenthal, 1998). For instance, Kreps defined disasters as: “non-routine events in societies or their larger subsystems (e.g. regions, communities) that involve social disruption or physical harm” (Kreps, 1998:34).
Attacks such as 9/11 and other recent disasters have forced organizations to become more proactive rather than waiting for an emergency to happen and then responding afterwards which leads to astronomical costs and fines to companies. The approach to risk management in organizations is looking more extensively at their technology infrastructure and deciding the best ways to recovery of data and making sure the employees can still work. Organizations have greater awareness of the importance of recovery and the time an organization will need to recover. Additionally, organizations are spending more money on IT and new technologies that will allow employees to continue working and allow the organization to still function even in the event of