Drift Into Failure : From Hunting Broken Components to Understanding Complex Systems

What does the collapse of sub-prime lending have in common with a broken jackscrew in an airliner's tailplane? Or the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico with the burn-up of Space Shuttle Columbia? These were systems that drifted into failure. While pursuing success in a dynamic, complex environment with limited resources and multiple goal conflicts, a succession of small, everyday decisions eventually produced breakdowns on a massive scale. We have trouble grasping the complexity and normality that gives rise to such large events. We hunt for broken parts, fixable properties, people we can hold accountable. Our analyses of complex system breakdowns remain depressingly linear, depressingly componential - imprisoned in the space of ideas once defined by Newton and Descartes. The growth of complexity in society has outpaced our understanding of how complex systems work and fail. Our technologies have gotten ahead of our theories. We are able to build things - deep-sea oil rigs, jackscrews, collateralized debt obligations - whose properties we understand in isolation. But in competitive, regulated societies, their connections proliferate, their interactions and interdependencies multiply, their complexities mushroom. This book explores complexity theory and systems thinking to understand better how complex systems drift into failure. It studies sensitive dependence on initial conditions, unruly technology, tipping points, diversity - and finds that failure emerges opportunistically, non-randomly, from the very webs of relationships that breed success and that are supposed to protect organizations from disaster. It develops a vocabulary that allows us to harness complexity and find new ways of managing drift. "Cover"--"Half Title"--"Title" -- "Copyright" -- "Contents" -- "List of Figures" -- "Acknowledgments" -- "Reviews for Drift into Failure" -- "Preface" -- "1 Failure is Always an Option" -- "Who messed up here?" -- "Technology has developed more quickly than theory" -- "Complexity, locality and rationality" -- "Complexity and drift into failure" -- "A great title, a lousy metaphor" -- "References" -- "2 Features of Drift" -- "The broken part" -- "The outlines of drift" -- "A story of drift" -- "References" -- "3 The Legacy of Newton and Descartes" -- "Why did Newton and Descartes have such an impact?" -- "So why should we care?" -- "We have Newton on a retainer" -- "References" -- "4 The Search for the Broken Component" -- "Broken components after a hailstorm" -- "Broken components to explain a broken system" -- "Newton and the simplicity of failure" -- "References" -- "5 Theorizing Drift" -- "Man-made disasters" -- "High reliability organizations" -- "Goal interactions and production pressure" -- "Normalizing deviance, structural secrecy and practical drift" -- "Control theory and drift" -- "Resilience engineering" -- "References" -- "6 What is Complexity and Systems Thinking?" -- "More redundancy and barriers, more complexity" -- "Up and out, not down and in" -- "Systems thinking" -- "Complex systems theory" -- "Complexity and drift" -- "References" -- "7 Managing the Complexity of Drift" -- "Complexity, control and influence" -- "Diversity as a safety value" -- "Turning the five features of drift into levers of influence" -- "Drifting into success" -- "Complexity, drift, and accountability" -- "A post-Newtonian ethic for failure in complex systems" -- "References" -- "Bibliography "What does the collapse of sub-prime lending have in common with a broken jackscrew in an airliner’s tailplane? Or the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico with the burn-up of Space Shuttle Columbia? These were systems that drifted into failure. While pursuing success in a dynamic, complex environment with limited resources and multiple goal conflicts, a succession of small, everyday decisions eventually produced breakdowns on a massive scale." ([More from publisher][1]) [1]: http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calctitle=1&pageSubject=3018&sort=pubdate&forthcoming=1&title_id=10915&edition_id=14042 This book explores complexity theory and systems thinking to better understand how complex systems drift into failure. It studies sensitive dependence on initial conditions, unruly technology, tipping points, diversity - and finds that failure emerges opp Contents: Preface Failure is always an option Features of drift The legacy of Newton and Descartes The search for the broken component Theorizing drift What is complexity and systems thinking? Managing the complexity of drift Bibliography Index.