IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2018 - 66

represents complete understanding of failures in com-
plex technological systems.
In his 1993 book, Sagan uses both frameworks to
examine nuclear missile defense. He argues that, super-
ficially, the nuclear missile defense system seems to
support the HRO framework since accidental nuclear
war has not yet occurred [14]. Upon detailed inspection,
Sagan determined that several incidents seemed more
consistent with normal accidents. Instead of learning
from mistakes, as predicted by the HRO framework, the
people involved in these incidents attempted to simulta-
neously cover them up and spin the facts to support the
continued development of weapons systems [14]. Fur-
thermore, he identifies challenges to organizational
learning cited by the HRO framework: ambiguous feed-
back, political considerations, accurate reporting, and
secrecy. These "other" concerns dominated safety con-
siderations after incidents, according to Sagan, and pre-
vented military organizations from learning from
failures of the nuclear missile system.
Sagan's characterization of the HRO framework
inspired a debate in the Journal of Contingencies and
Crisis Management, including articles from LaPorte,
Perrow, and Sagan [2], [8], [15], [16]. LaPorte disagreed
with Sagan's assessment of HROs as "optimistic" and
agreed with Perrow that avoiding failure cannot be guar-
anteed. Perrow's response accused the HRO research-
ers of failing to critically engage with the organizations
that they observe and wrote that "no one can be against
clear safety goals, learning, experience, and so on" [2].
Perrow argued that Sagan's greatest contribution was to
emphasize the role played by group interests in acci-
dents. In response, LaPorte and Rochlin asserted that
the HRO framework is a study of organizations under
trying conditions - not a theory of accidents - and to
directly compare it to the normal accident framework is
fruitless [15]. Finally, Sagan closed the debate by calling
for focus on the political aspects of accidents and orga-
nizations [16]. He specifically argued for more research
on redundancy [16]: when it creates common-mode fail-
ures, when it decreases component reliability, and when
organizational redundancy is equivalent to engineering
redundancy (argued by Roberts in [6]).
To summarize, HRO researchers see a complementary
role for each framework, while normal accident research-
ers tend to see little of interest in the in-depth organiza-
tional studies supporting HRO research. We have seen
from this discussion that HRO researchers focus on the
organizational structure of the organization, while normal
accident researchers focus on the underlying characteris-
tics of the technological system. We cannot ignore the
underlying technology, but we also need to know the role
that organizations play in enabling or avoiding failures.
Normal accident researchers emphasize political and

66

social power relationships, while HRO researchers empha-
size cooperation. Both frameworks are useful, because
they explore different, yet important, elements of human
behavior and complex technological systems.

Electric Power Systems as Complex
Technological Systems
The power grid has always been a large aggregate of
equipment and organizations, as described by Hughes
[17], [18]. In the U.S., there are more than 19 000 indi-
vidual generators rated larger than 1 MW in more than
7000 power plant facilities [19]. The high voltage trans-
mission system comprises more than 640 000 miles of
lines, while the distribution system has more than
6.3  million miles of lines [19]. On the organizational
side, deregulation created a plethora of players by dis-
mantling many vertically-integrated monopolies and
opening opportunities for competition. As a complex
system regulated for reliability, electric power systems
offer an interesting case study for both the normal acci-
dent framework and the HRO framework. As discussed
in the previous section, both Perrow and HRO research-
ers (Roberts and Schulman) have devoted attention to
electric power systems. Now, the ways both frameworks
have been taken up in electric power systems literature
will be discussed.
In 2001, a workshop on critical infrastructure and
interdisciplinary research convened in Washington, DC.
In the first session, Perrow admitted that his fears about
Y2K did not come to pass, explaining that the world was
"less interactively complex and tightly coupled than
some of us... thought it would be" [20]. Perrow is con-
cerned that increased centralization through mergers
and/or market control is being used to deal with com-
plex interdependencies [20], though, in previous work,
he argued that only organizations with rigid hierarchy
and strong discipline could deal with complex and tight-
ly coupled systems [1]. In his presentation, Perrow
focused on the need for collaboration because limited
communication and increased centralization will lead to
more failures as the world becomes more complex and
tightly coupled [20].
Peerenboom described different types of interdepen-
dency and failure, giving more explanatory power to
interdependency (coupling), something he previously
described in [21]. Interdependency can be physical,
where the material output of one infrastructure system
is used by another [22], such as using electricity to
extract coal to generate electricity. Interdependencies
can also be "cyber" (electronic information and control
systems) or geographic (infrastructure is co-located
without connections) [22]. Finally, Peerenboom defines
logical interdependency to capture other coupling, e.g.
financial markets [22].

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

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JUNE 2018



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