Working in Practice But Not in Theory: Theoretical Challenges of “High-Reliability Organizations”

Minnowbrook Center1 Syracuse Universityr September 19". research was supported in part by Office of Public administration practitioners and scholars harbor no illusions about organizational perfection (cf. Jaffee 1973).' They do not expect bureaucracies to be error-free. People make mistakes, machines break. No one is perfect and no organization is likely to achieve this ideal. Indeed, administrative folklore teaches that errormaking is the normal bureaucratic condition: "Murphy (and his law) Lives!" Yet some organizations must not make serious errors because their work is to0 important and the effects of their failures too disastrous. This is especially true with organizations that operate technologies that are very beneficial, yet costly, and hazardous.