DYNM 660 - Mistakes and Errors,Accidents and Disasters

Institution:

University of Pennsylvania

Subject:

Description:

Bosk. The purpose of DYNM 660 is to provide a basic understanding of some rather ubiquitous social phenomena: mistakes, errors, accidents, and disasters. We will look at these misfirings across a number of institutional domains: aviation, nuclear power plants, and medicine. Our goal is to understand how organizations "think" about these phenomena, how they develop strategies of prevention, how these strategies of prevention create new vulnerabilities to different sorts of mishaps, how organizations respond when things do go awry, and how they plan for disasters. At the same time we will be concerned with certain tensions in the sociological view of accidents, errors, mistakes and disasters at the organizational level and at the level of the individual. Errors, accidents, mistakes and disasters are embedded in organizational complexities; as such, they are no one's fault. At the same time, as we seek explanations for these adverse events, we seek out whom to blame and whom to punish. We will explore throughout the semester the tension between a view that sees adverse events as the result of flawed organizational processes versus a view that sees these events as a result of flawed individuals.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.upenn.edu

Phone Number:

(215) 898-5000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

The Course Profile information is provided and updated by third parties including the respective institutions. While the institutions are able to update their information at any time, the information is not independently validated, and no party associated with this website can accept responsibility for its accuracy.