From Control to Drift: The Dynamics of Corporate Information Infrastructures
From Control to Drift: The Dynamics of Corporate Information Infrastructures
Managing the unexpected: resilient performance in an age of uncertainty, second edition
Managing the unexpected: resilient performance in an age of uncertainty, second edition
Organizational-historical analysis of the "failure to respond to alarm" problems
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans
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Automation brings the potential for safety and capacity improvements in virtually any domain. However, such potential, is often compromised by those unintended and undesirable effects resulting from the interaction of automation with operational practices. This study inquires into the organizational and inter-organizational precursors to such effects in safety critical domains. While drawing on organizational safety literature, the study consists of an interpretive case centered on an alarm system from the Air Traffic Management domain. The history and adoption of the alarm have been investigated within the European Air Traffic Management System through the historical ethnographic method. Findings indicated that the main organizational precursors to problematic set up of the alarm included: (i) a tendency to frame implementation as an engineering routine project rather than an innovative safety effort; (ii) a commitment to implementation without an assessment of the organizational capability to implement the alarm; (iii) flawed service provider-software vendor integration; (iv) underspecified international standards. Implications for policy makers and managers of automation programmes are discussed.