The Organizational and Interorganizational Development of Disasters

Abstract

September 1 976, volume 21 Public inquiries into behavior connected with three major disasters are examined and classified to study the condi-tions under which large-scale intelligence failures de-velop. Common causal features are rigidities in institu-tional beliefs, distracting decoy phenomena, neglect of outside complaints, multiple information-handling dif-ficulties, exacerbation of the hazards by strangers, failure to comply with regulations, and a tendency to minimize emergent danger. Such features form part of the incuba-tion stage in a sequence of disaster development, ac-cumulating unnoticed until a precipitating event leads to the onset of the disaster and a degree of cultural collapse. Recommendations following public inquiries are seen as part of a process of cultural readjustment after a disaster, allowing the ill-structured problem which led to the failure to be absorbed into the culture in a well-structured form. The sequence model of intelligence failure presented and the discussion of cases are intended to offer a paradigm for discussion of less tragic, but equally important organi-zational and interorganizational failures of foresight. Administrative organizations may be thought of as cultural mechanisms developed to set collective goals and make ar-rangements to deploy available resources to attain those goals. Given this concern with future objectives, analysts have paid considerable attention to the manner in which or-ganizational structures are patterned to cope with unknown events-or uncertainty-in the future facing the organization and its environment (Crozier, 1964; Thompson, 1967; Law-rence and Lorsch, 1967). Uncertainty creates problems for action. Actors' organizations resolve these problems by following rules of thumb, using rituals, relying on habitual patterns, or, more self-consciously, by setting goals and making plans to reach them. These devices provide the determinateness and certainty needed to embark upon organizational action in the present. But since organizations are indeterminate open systems, particularly in their orientation to future events (Thompson, 1 967: 1 0), members of organizations can never be sure that their pres-ent actions will be adequate for the attainment of their de-sired goals. Prediction is made more difficult by the complex and exten-sive nature of the tasks that must be carried out to fulfill organizational goals of any significance. Many tasks, particu-larly the more important ones, are loosely formulated, di-rected to ill-defined or possibly conflicting ends, and lacking unequivocal criteria for deciding when the goals have been attained. This situation is resolved sometimes by creating small areas of certainty which can be handled. At other times the problem is redrawn in a more precise form which ignores features that are difficult to specify or are nonquantifiable. Action is made possible in organizations by the collective adoption of simplifying assumptions about the environment, producing what Simon (1 957) called a framework of "bounded rationality." When a task which was formerly small enough to be handled amenably grows to an unmanageable size, resources may be 378/Administrative Science Quarterly