Ebunka: do cultural differences matter?

Fujita, Yushi; Toquam, J.L.; Wheeler, William Bruce; Tani, Mamoru; Mouri, Taizo

doi:10.1109/hfpp.1992.283411

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Similar objections have been raised by Fujita et al (4), who pointed out that "objective" international surveys used to study plant performance do not work well in Japan, where workers tend to answer what they think they ought to be saying and tend to present themselves and their companies in the most positive manner possible. Moreover, the notion of technical convergence was directly attacked:…”

Section: Large Pwrs As a Problem Framementioning

confidence: 76%

“…Large PWRs will therefore have similar design, similar modes of operation, similar components, and so on whether the plant is built in the United States, France, or Japan(6). With few exceptions(3,4,6), most studies of nuclear power operations adopt this culture-free hypothesis as a frame, assuming that the functional details of operation of plants of similar design (e.g. large PWRs) will vary little from…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Nuclear Power Operations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Rochlin¹,

Meier²

1994

Annu. Rev. Energy. Environ.

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Section: Large Pwrs As a Problem Framementioning

confidence: 76%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Nuclear Power Operations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Rochlin¹,

Meier²

1994

Annu. Rev. Energy. Environ.

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“…It is, however, dif®cult for one who is not totally familiar with the national and industrial cultures that shape industrial culture to fully understand the origins and consequences of operational myths and ideologies (Fujita et al 1992). Moreover, organisational myths, however, are not so easily altered or remedied.…”

Section: Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Rational Choice of Error: Comments on the JCO Accident Report

Rochlin

2000

CTW

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The ®rst reports of the criticality accident at JCO seemed an echo of historical accidents in dying rust-belt industries: those who design the equipment and procedures are long gone or far away; those who now run the plant allow critical operations to be redesigned on an ad hoc basis with little interest in long-term operational conditions or the monitoring of processes; the workers themselves are underpaid, under-trained, and underquali®ed for the tasks they have to perform, and they improvise with minimal oversight. There is ample evidence for this perspective in the admirable report of Furuta et al (2000), which is careful, detailed, imaginative and unsparing in its criticism of the industry in general and JCO in particular.The report points out that the model of an`industryin-decay' is too simple to explain this case. The plant managers were proud of their safety record in minimising ordinary' accidents and injuries. The business was in some decline, but not decaying. And although there is evidence of neglect of oversight and insuf®cient training of the workers, economic and industrial factors do not provide a suf®ciently robust explanatory framework. It also follows a course that is not unfamiliar to students of past accidents and errors where the operators have not been obviously at fault for clear violation of operating rules and principles. Structure (the social, political and institutional framework that shapes and controls human action) is invoked to control agency (the capacity of human beings for imagining and taking independent action). Organisational and institutional myths, beliefs and values are identi®ed as causal factors, and better methods and procedures for ensuring rational choice are invoked as remedies. What is overlooked are the implications of noting that those who set into motion the sequence that led to disaster did so through careful and logical choice, unconstrained by time or economic pressures. 1 Without minimising the importance of values and beliefs as explanatory factors, I argue for the importance of understanding the degree to which the situational variables within which the operators acted were framed by the industrial-technical characteristics of this particular case. Intermittence ± the infrequency and non-reproducibility of the process ± was one key to the failure because it affected the human agents directly by interfering with individual and collective learning at regulatory, managerial and operational levels. Marginalisation was another: the work site was small, crowded and far away from the centre of JCO's operations, reinforcing the impression that the process was not only ad hoc and improvisational, but not worthy of particular attention (i.e. to safety).Amid the many suggestions and recommendations, two in particular attracted my attention: ®rst, that employees should always be conscious of the risk they take; and, second, that the`safety myth' that the authors ®nd embedded in the industry be replaced with a less mythical attitude based on a`risk-based assessment o...

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“…If these trends, continue and broaden, further use of the technologies associated with the historical fuel cycles will become increasingly difficult. Moreover, France has begun to move away from technocracy and centralization in recent years (which is bound to create increasing trouble for the Super-Phenix program), and there are some signs that even Japan may now be moving, away from the very high degree of "groupness" and social acceptance that many observers have long taken as their cultural norm (Fujita, et al, 1992;Lincoln and Kalleberg, 1990;Schoenbaum and Ainley, 1988).…”

Section: -17mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The power reactors themselves are treated in this analysis as simply an (important) element in the overall nuclear power system, a defining, but not determining artifact in scoping the boundaries of commercial nuclear technology. Figure 7.3 is yet another heuristic, based largely on the research of others (Fujita, et al" 1992;Hofstede, 1979;Hofstede, 1991;Lammers and Hickson, 1979;Louis, 1983;Maurice, et al" 1980;Tayeb, 1988). It attempts to array the technical culture of several different countries along the grid-group dimensions proposed by Douglas.…”

Section: Nuclear Technology and Social Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Proceedings of the 2. MIT international conference on the next generation of nuclear power technology. Final report

1993

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Ebunka: do cultural differences matter?

Cited by 6 publications

References 2 publications

Nuclear Power Operations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Nuclear Power Operations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

A Rational Choice of Error: Comments on the JCO Accident Report

Proceedings of the 2. MIT international conference on the next generation of nuclear power technology. Final report

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