Really solid synthesis of Turner through Dekker. The move from "broken components" to drift feels crucial becuase it shifts focus from isolated failures to system-wide adaptation patterns. Saw this play out in a hospital network I consulted for where every department optimized locally for efficiency, but nobody caught how those local wins were creating massive coordination gaps. Turner's point about info not fitting existing categories probaly explains why orgs keep repeating the same disasters with slightly different variables.
Very thoughtful discussion, Chris. This concept also aligns with the concept of social entropy, often attributed to the depletion of energy in an organization (or social system) through complacency and fading attention. Clearly failures are accumulating, but also attention is declining. The question is which is more detrimental to maintaining reliable performance.
Once you bring "over time" into the analysis of disasters, why stop with terms like incubation or gestation?
The analytical problem is a bit like the one now over dating WWII. It's one thing to adopt the conventional periodization of the latter as 1939 - 1945. It is another matter to read in detail how 1931 - 1953 was a protracted period of conflicts and wars unfolding into and from a central paroxysm in Europe.
In the latter perspective, the December 1941 - September 1945 paroxysm was embedded in a longer series of large regional wars. (Think: Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the late 1940s Dutch war in Indonesia, the French war in Indochina from the late 1940s through early 1950s, and the Korean War.)
Some of the disasters discussed in the classics you mention now look like paroxysms bounded before and after by unfolding (that is, not uniquely contingent) events.
Why does this matter? It matters because analysis that stops with the disaster event itself too frequently ends up talking about the capital projects and capital budgets needed to rebuild. My own view--and I stand to be corrected--is that the focus instead should be on the recurrent operating budgets of the government(s) concerned.
Current emergency management terminology about this or that "longer-term recovery" would be considerably problematized when the longer term is one drought unfolding into another and then over again. So too immediate emergency response would look considerably less proactive when embedded in a process of recurring response always before the next disaster, without knowing in advance that the current or next event is in fact the paroxysm around which to periodize government action.
Source
Buchanan, A. (2023). Globalizing the Second World War. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies 258: 246-281.
I encountered this problem in writing my dissertation. I studied the historical (and organizational) development of the French labor movement and found that I had to go farther and farther back in history to understand the relevant conditions that shaped the movement. My wife teased that I was going to become a medieval historian instead of a political scientist! But point well taken: there is something arbitrary about periodizing a disaster and that has implications for how we interpret the wider problem or solution.
There is a curious analytic asymmetry around this topic.
As you mention, if you start analysis by trying to elucidate a disaster's incubation/gestation period, then how far back do you go? What's a discipline's closure rule for causal analysis?
In sharp contrast, what happens after the disaster looks to be far clearer causally and empirically: Funds to prevent another such disaster increase only to taper off, as the initial hype fades away. The latter implies, among other things, that undertaking (further) prevention measures as soon as possible after the disaster is important, if only because more funds are likely to be available earlier rather than later.
What's at issue is, I think, much more than the fact that ex post analysis of the past ends up more a search for ultimate causes while ex ante analysis of measures to prevent the next disaster focuses on proximate causes.
What happens immediately after a disaster produces a clarity and urgency with respect to stabilizing situational conditions, at least with respect to restoring key infrastructure services. Capitalism got us into these disasters, but if there is to be an end to this capitalism, that too depends on the restoration resilience in already existing but highly granular path dependencies.
Really solid synthesis of Turner through Dekker. The move from "broken components" to drift feels crucial becuase it shifts focus from isolated failures to system-wide adaptation patterns. Saw this play out in a hospital network I consulted for where every department optimized locally for efficiency, but nobody caught how those local wins were creating massive coordination gaps. Turner's point about info not fitting existing categories probaly explains why orgs keep repeating the same disasters with slightly different variables.
Interesting hospital example. Thanks for sharing.
Very thoughtful discussion, Chris. This concept also aligns with the concept of social entropy, often attributed to the depletion of energy in an organization (or social system) through complacency and fading attention. Clearly failures are accumulating, but also attention is declining. The question is which is more detrimental to maintaining reliable performance.
Agreed. Attention is critical and so easy for it to gradually decline. But had'n't thought about the concept of social entropy.
Once you bring "over time" into the analysis of disasters, why stop with terms like incubation or gestation?
The analytical problem is a bit like the one now over dating WWII. It's one thing to adopt the conventional periodization of the latter as 1939 - 1945. It is another matter to read in detail how 1931 - 1953 was a protracted period of conflicts and wars unfolding into and from a central paroxysm in Europe.
In the latter perspective, the December 1941 - September 1945 paroxysm was embedded in a longer series of large regional wars. (Think: Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the late 1940s Dutch war in Indonesia, the French war in Indochina from the late 1940s through early 1950s, and the Korean War.)
Some of the disasters discussed in the classics you mention now look like paroxysms bounded before and after by unfolding (that is, not uniquely contingent) events.
Why does this matter? It matters because analysis that stops with the disaster event itself too frequently ends up talking about the capital projects and capital budgets needed to rebuild. My own view--and I stand to be corrected--is that the focus instead should be on the recurrent operating budgets of the government(s) concerned.
Current emergency management terminology about this or that "longer-term recovery" would be considerably problematized when the longer term is one drought unfolding into another and then over again. So too immediate emergency response would look considerably less proactive when embedded in a process of recurring response always before the next disaster, without knowing in advance that the current or next event is in fact the paroxysm around which to periodize government action.
Source
Buchanan, A. (2023). Globalizing the Second World War. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies 258: 246-281.
Great point Emery. You read so widely!
I encountered this problem in writing my dissertation. I studied the historical (and organizational) development of the French labor movement and found that I had to go farther and farther back in history to understand the relevant conditions that shaped the movement. My wife teased that I was going to become a medieval historian instead of a political scientist! But point well taken: there is something arbitrary about periodizing a disaster and that has implications for how we interpret the wider problem or solution.
There is a curious analytic asymmetry around this topic.
As you mention, if you start analysis by trying to elucidate a disaster's incubation/gestation period, then how far back do you go? What's a discipline's closure rule for causal analysis?
In sharp contrast, what happens after the disaster looks to be far clearer causally and empirically: Funds to prevent another such disaster increase only to taper off, as the initial hype fades away. The latter implies, among other things, that undertaking (further) prevention measures as soon as possible after the disaster is important, if only because more funds are likely to be available earlier rather than later.
What's at issue is, I think, much more than the fact that ex post analysis of the past ends up more a search for ultimate causes while ex ante analysis of measures to prevent the next disaster focuses on proximate causes.
What happens immediately after a disaster produces a clarity and urgency with respect to stabilizing situational conditions, at least with respect to restoring key infrastructure services. Capitalism got us into these disasters, but if there is to be an end to this capitalism, that too depends on the restoration resilience in already existing but highly granular path dependencies.