Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies
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Perrow argues that the combined effects of tightly coupled complex systems and a high risk potential render accidents unavoidable by simple design choices.
“Sociologist John Perrow discusses human error when accidents happen in complex technical systems and argues that the combined effects of tightly coupled complex systems and a high risk potential render accidents unavoidable by simple design choices.”
From Proceduralizing control and discretion: Human oversight in artificial intelligence policy (2020) · cites this paper as [43]
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- Authors
- Cummings, L. L., & Perrow, C.
- Venue
- Administrative Science Quarterly
- Publisher
- JSTOR
- Published
- 1984-12
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 630
- ISSN
- 0001-8392 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4293117802
- Cited by
- 2,861
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 153 · 2024: 163 · 2023: 127 · 2022: 126 · 2021: 125 · 2020: 140 · 2019: 113 · 2018: 144 · 2017: 120 · 2016: 120 · 2015: 131 · 2014: 113 · 2013: 103 · 2012: 118
- Type
- book review
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Administrative Science Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Risk Perception and Management
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Radiological and Ultrasound Technology › Occupational Health and Safety Research
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Risk and Safety Analysis
- Keywords
- normal accidents, high-risk technologies, technological hazards, accident prevention, risk management, industrial safety
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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