Organizations and Disasters: Living With the Reality of Really Big Mistakes

This new first year seminar will introduce students to the amazing world of organizational failures and disasters. Recent disasters will be examined within frames provided by several leading organizational theories about how and why modern organizations are so frequently plagued by mistakes that wreak havoc on many constituencies: from customers, patients and employers to innocent bystanders. Among the disasters we will explore as examples will be the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, the Challenger Disaster, the 9/11 attacks, and missestimation of nuclear weapon devastation. We will consider Normal Accident Theory, High Reliability Theory, and the Normalization of Deviance. Enrollment limited to 19 first-year students.