134: Normal Accidents -- Charles Perrow (Part 1)

This month we are discussing Charles Perrow’s book Normal Accidents that addresses the risks associated with complex, tightly coupled high-risk technological systems. Through analyses of numerous accidents and incidents involving nuclear power plants, petrochemical plants, aerospace and maritime systems, and others, Perrow derived a framework that showed how high-risk systems are prone to accidents if they are highly complex and the components are tightly coupled. He also argued that efforts to improve safety such as more meters and indicators can have the opposite effect of complicating the operator’s ability to control a catastrophic situation.

You can listen to 134: Normal Accidents -- Charles Perrow (Part 1) online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

134: Normal Accidents -- Charles Perrow (Part 1) is an episode from Talking About Organizations Podcast by Talking About Organizations.

This episode is 00:43:48 long.

This episode was published on Feb 10, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Talking About Organizations Podcast when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.