Abstract
Recently the Danish subway trains have begun to announce “on time” when they arrive at a Station on time. This action reflects a worrying acceptance of the normality of failure.
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Notes
- 1.
See Jensen (2008) for a critical interpretation of the health safety movement’s interpretation of Perrow.
- 2.
What is failure? In most cases, it has nothing to do with spectacular crashes, shattering, cracking, smashing to pieces. Failure instead means quietly turning to dust, dying away in a long-drawn-out manner, unspectacularly drifting out of the zone of attention or being tellingly hushed up (Own translation).
- 3.
See Pors (2011) for a comprehensive discussion and analytical use of the concept of noise.
- 4.
See Sennett (1998) for a more recent version of the same basic diagnosis.
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Knudsen, M. (2014). Failing Decisions. In: Bergmann, J., Hahn, M., Langhof, A., Wagner, G. (eds) Scheitern – Organisations- und wirtschaftssoziologische Analysen. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-01652-4_4
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