دانلود رایگان مقاله بداهه سازمانی و غرق شدن کشتی کاستا کنکوردیا

Abstract

High-reliability organizations operate in highly regulated sectors in which the main concern is ensuring the safety of people and goods. Despite high levels of formalization, organizations have to be sensitive to contingent situations and ready to face the unexpected, so the role of the people in command remains crucial. When unanticipated events and contingencies arise, organizational improvisation comes into its own. Improvisation is the deliberate fusion of design and execution in a novel production entailing the cognitive, rational, and event intuitive interpretation of prescribed rules and standards of conduct at various levels of aggregation. Standardization and improvisation are often represented as two conflicting demands rather than as necessarily interdependent; hence, the possible presence of improvisation in high-reliability organizations has been left underexplored. While most of the extant studies on improvisation have stressed the wisdom of improvised choices, not all improvisations are so successful. In this article we illuminate the dark side of organizational improvisation by analyzing the notorious case of the sinking of the Costa Concordia. The case shows how conformity to the formal adoption of standards and compliance to them can provide a shelter under which impromptu adaptation can be pursued, expressing the negative side of improvisation.

5. Conclusion

While improvisation has often been mostly associated with noble fine arts and novel creative outcomes, this article addresses its negative implications. The analysis of the collision of Costa Concordia displays how improvised actions can take place even in highly regulated environments and create organizational drift toward disastrous outcomes. The case shows how a sequence of actionsthat could be superficially labeled as just hubris, disobedience to rules, bad luck, orshowboating isinstead a consequence of bad choices resulting from illusions of authoritative control in the absence of effects that can moderate this illusion. Even in a sector characterized by high reliability (cruising) and high levels of formalization of standards and procedures, managerial dynamics can allow the organization to deny its own major mandate (safety). Organizations, even those designed to be highly reliable, can end up being vulnerable to human decisions that are not predicted by the system and that produce vicious circles that lead to disaster. That happens when the formal adoption of standards may allow forms of adaptation under the radar, yet under the shelter of formal compliance.