Patterns of ‘Mock Bureaucracy’ in Mining Disasters: An Analysis of the Westray Coal Mine Explosion

Abstract

Recent studies on the antecedents of industrial crises have tended to focus on disasters in high-risk systems involving complex technologies and tightly-knit processes. This paper examines events leading up to mining disasters which past research has characterized as being typically more foreseeable and avoidable. We discuss how many mining disasters are likely to be the result of`mock bureaucracies' or situations characterized by overt violation of safety rules at the workplace. Using the Westray mine explosion as an illustrative case, the paper traces the development and institutionalization of a mock bureaucracy in an organization. Implications for further research and understanding of industrial crises are drawn.

A framework for examining leadership in extreme contexts

“…Going beyond an extreme event, we define an extreme context as an environment where one or more extreme events are occurring or are likely to occur that may exceed the organization's capacity to prevent and result in an extensive and intolerable magnitude of physical, psychological, or material consequences to-or in close physical or psycho-social proximity to-organization members. 4 Examples include the Mann Gulch (Weick, 1993) and South Canyon fires (Useem, Cook, & Sutton, 2005), Indian Ocean Tsunami (Athukorala & Resosudarmo, 2005;Rodriquez, Wachtendorf, Kendra, & Trainor, 2006), Bhopal Chemical release (Bowman & Kunreuther, 1988;Shrivastava, 1987;Union Carbide Report, 1985), Three Mile Island meltdown (Hopkins, 2001;Perrow, 1997), Columbia Space Shuttle explosion (Heimann, 1993;Starbuck & Miliken, 1988;Vaughan, 1996), Westray mine disaster (Hynes & Prasad, 1997), Mount Everest climbing incidents (Kayes, 2004;Tempest, Starkey, & Ennew, 2007), hurricane Katrina (Comfort, 2007;Gheytanchi et al, 2007;Kapucu & Van Wart, 2006;Rego & Garau, 2007), Tenerife airplane collision (Weick, 1990), Chernobyl (Hohenemser, Deicher, Ernst, Hofsäss, Lindner, & Recknagel (1986)), numerous military leadership and combat studies (e.g., Cosby et al, 2006;Morath, Ccurnow, Cronin, Leonard, & McGonigle, 2006;Leonard, Polich, Peterson, Sorter, & Moore, 2006;Department of the Army, 1950Scales, 2006;Snook, 2000;Ulmer, Shaler, Bullis, DiClemente, & Jacobs, 2004;Wong, Bliese, & McGurk, 2003) and organizational doctrine such as the U. S. Army (Department of the Army, 2006) and National Wildfire Service (2007) leadership manuals.…”

Making Sense of Bad News: The Media, Sensemaking, and Organizational Crisis

“…In the Westray narrative, these influences include the constraining effects of internal power mechanisms, market forces, and external political realities. In their analyses of the explosion and its aftermath, Hynes & Prasad (1997), Glasbeek &Turner (1999), andMcMullan (2001) all implicate the assumptions of the capital model to varying degrees.…”

“…Apart from the legal issues (see also Dodd, 1999), studies of the Westray mine disaster have focused on the psychology and perceptions of the miners and their families (Comish, 1993;Comish & Comish, 1999;Dodd, 1999;Wilde, 1997), institutional and structural pressures (Hynes & Prasad 1997;Wicks 2001), politics (Jobb, 1994), employer-employee relations (Glasbeek & Tucker, 1999), public relations (Richards, 1996), and newspaper reporting of events (McMullan, 2001;McMullan & Hinze, 1999). In this paper we explore the role of the media in the social construction of a sense of an organizational disaster such as that of the Westray mine explosion.…”

“…These include the Union Carbide gas leak at Bhopal (Weick, 1988); an oil spill by Union Oil on the California shore (Gephart, 1984); a fatal pipeline explosion in Alberta (Gephart, 1993); and studies of the Challenger disaster (Starbuck & Milliken, 1988). A number of prior analyses explicitly refer to "making sense" of Westray without expounding theoretically on sensemaking; another refers to "political sensemaking" (Hynes & Prasad, 1997), thus providing a foundation for continued analysis in this vein. Some of these works on Westray preceded the conclusions of various courts and the public inquiry that followed.…”

Toward a strategic human resource management model of high reliability organization performance

“…To facilitate development, HROs regularly assess core processes and procedures and go to great lengths to avoid structural decoupling in which the procedures on the books look nothing like actual practice (Hynes & Prasad, 1997). They are vigilant about using "incident review" processes where breakdowns (both small and large) and near misses are openly and honestly examined and, when necessary, rectified (Carroll, 1995(Carroll, , 1998Haunschild & Sullivan, 2002;Schulman, 1993).…”