Charles Perrow: 3 books
The Next Catastrophe
Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters
Language: English
Release Date: February 7, 2011
Charles Perrow is famous worldwide for his ideas about normal accidents, the notion that multiple and unexpected failures--catastrophes waiting to happen--are built into our society's complex systems. In The Next Catastrophe, he offers crucial insights into how to make us safer, proposing a bold new...
Organizing America
Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism
Language: English
Release Date: January 10, 2009
American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or more employees--up from zero percent in 1800. Is this institutional immensity the logical outcome of technological...
Normal Accidents
Living with High Risk Technologies
Language: English
Release Date: October 12, 2011
Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety--building in more warnings and safeguards--fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding...