Heroes and Villains in Complex Socio-technical Systems

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Author(s)
Gao, J
Dekker, S
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2016
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The history of efforts to reduce ‘human errors’ across workplaces and industries suggests that people (or their weaknesses) are seen as a problem to control [1, 3, 15, 16]. However, some have proposed that humans can be heroes as they can adapt and compensate for weaknesses within a system and direct it away from potential catastrophes [15]. But the existence of heroes would suggest that villains (i.e. humans who cause a disaster) exist as well [16], and that it might well be the outcome that determines which human becomes which. The purpose of this chapter is to examine if complex socio-technical systems would allow for the ...
View more >The history of efforts to reduce ‘human errors’ across workplaces and industries suggests that people (or their weaknesses) are seen as a problem to control [1, 3, 15, 16]. However, some have proposed that humans can be heroes as they can adapt and compensate for weaknesses within a system and direct it away from potential catastrophes [15]. But the existence of heroes would suggest that villains (i.e. humans who cause a disaster) exist as well [16], and that it might well be the outcome that determines which human becomes which. The purpose of this chapter is to examine if complex socio-technical systems would allow for the existence of heroes and villains, as outcomes in such systems are usually thought to be the product of interactions rather than a single factor [17]. The chapter will first examine if the properties of complex systems as suggested by Dekker et al. [18] would allow for heroes and villains to exist. These include: (a) synthesis and holism, (b) emergence, (c) foreseeability of probabilities, not certainties, (d) time-irreversibility and, (e) perpetual incompleteness and uncertainty of knowledge, before concluding with a discussion of the implications of the (non) existence of heroes and villains in complex systems for the way we conduct investigations when something goes wrong inside of those systems.
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View more >The history of efforts to reduce ‘human errors’ across workplaces and industries suggests that people (or their weaknesses) are seen as a problem to control [1, 3, 15, 16]. However, some have proposed that humans can be heroes as they can adapt and compensate for weaknesses within a system and direct it away from potential catastrophes [15]. But the existence of heroes would suggest that villains (i.e. humans who cause a disaster) exist as well [16], and that it might well be the outcome that determines which human becomes which. The purpose of this chapter is to examine if complex socio-technical systems would allow for the existence of heroes and villains, as outcomes in such systems are usually thought to be the product of interactions rather than a single factor [17]. The chapter will first examine if the properties of complex systems as suggested by Dekker et al. [18] would allow for heroes and villains to exist. These include: (a) synthesis and holism, (b) emergence, (c) foreseeability of probabilities, not certainties, (d) time-irreversibility and, (e) perpetual incompleteness and uncertainty of knowledge, before concluding with a discussion of the implications of the (non) existence of heroes and villains in complex systems for the way we conduct investigations when something goes wrong inside of those systems.
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Book Title
Disaster Forensics: Understanding Root Cause and Complex Causality
Copyright Statement
© 2016 Springer. This is the author-manuscript version of this paper. It is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the publisher’s website for further information.
Subject
Other human society not elsewhere classified