Complex socio-technical systems fail; that is, accidents occur. And it is enormously important for engineers and policy makers to have a better way of thinking about accidents than is the current protocol following an air crash, a chemical plant fire, or the release of a contaminated drug. We need to understand better what the systems …
Ideologies and organizations as causes of political extremism
In a recent post I addressed the issue of the rise of mass intolerance and hate from the point of view of the public -- the processes through which sizable numbers of members of society come to be more intolerant in their attitudes and behaviors. This involves looking at the problem as being analogous to …
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Making sense of ISA 2016
The International Sociological Association hosted its third major forum in Vienna this month. (ISA forums are organized every four years; previous forums took place in Buenos Aires and Barcelona.) Nearly five thousand sociologists (and researchers in cognate disciplines) came together from countries all over the world, contributing to over 700 sessions in five days. So …
Elias on figurational sociology
A premise shared by all actor-centered versions of sociology is that individuals and their actions are the rock-bottom level of the social world. Every other social fact derives from facts at this level. Norbert Elias raises a strong and credible challenge to this ontological assumption in his work, offering a view of social action that …
Karl Polanyi as a critical realist?
In The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique Fred Block and PeggySomers focus on a phrase that Karl Polanyi uses in The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, the idea of treating society as “real”. They address this issue in the final chapter of the book. (This is in the …
Complementarity of thick and thin theories of the actor
There is a range of approaches to the social sciences that fall under the umbrella of "actor-centered" theories (link). The chief fissure among these theories is that between "thin" and "thick" theories of the actor -- theories which provide less or more detail about the mental frameworks and beliefs of the actors being described. The …
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Systems management and the War on Poverty
One of the important developments in engineering and management thinking since World War II is the value of approaching large problems as systems rather than simply as a sum of separable components. Designing a ballpoint pen is very different from designing an aircraft or a fire control system; in the latter cases there are multiple …
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Errors in organizations
Organizations do things -- process tax returns, deploy armies, send spacecraft to Mars. And in order to do these various things, organizations have people with job descriptions; organization charts; internal rules and procedures; information flows and pathways; leaders, supervisors, and frontline staff; training and professional development programs; and other particular characteristics that make up the …
Capitalism 2.0?
Capitalism is one particular configuration of the economic institutions that define production and consumption in a society. It involves private ownership of firms and resources, and a system of wage labor through which individuals compete for jobs within the context of a labor market. In its nature it creates positions of substantial power for owners …
Making change happen
There are many large social ills that we would collectively like to change. We would like to see an end to debilitating poverty; we would like to end the systematic disparities by race that exist in our society, in health, education, or income; we would like to see gun violence rates drop to levels found …
Understanding Society 