High-reliability organizations operate in highly regulated sectors where the main issue is ensuring the safety of goods and people. Despite elevated levels of formalization, organizations need to be sensitive to contingent situations and ready to face the sudden, or so the role of the people in command stays crucial. When unanticipated events and eventualities appear, organizational improvisation comes into its own.
Improvisation is the deliberate fusion of design and performance in a new generation entailing the cognitive, rational, and occasion intuitive interpretation of official rules and standards of actions at various rates of aggregation. Standardization and improvisation are often represented as two contradictory demands rather than as necessarily interdependent; hence, the possible presence of improvisation in high-reliability organizations has been left investigate. By assessing the infamous instance of the sinking of the Costa Concordia in this article we illuminate the dark side of organizational improvisation. The instance shows a shelter under which impromptu version can be pursued, expressing the negative side of improvisation can be provided by conformity to the proper adoption of standards and compliance to them.
PUBLICATION DATE: March 15, 2016 PRODUCT #: BH732-PDF-ENG
This is just an excerpt. This case is about LEADERSHIP & MANAGING PEOPLE
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