disaster
Building upon our argument that field-level learning from disaster is important, the aim of chapter three was to better understand how field-level learning from disaster takes place. This study blended the learning from disaster literature with insights from the
transformation perspective on knowledge sharing and communities-of-practice literature, and conceptualized field-level learning from disaster as a struggle between established and marginal community for participation in learning. The research question was: how
does a marginal community attempt to influence learning from disaster processes that are driven by established communities?
The starting point of the analysis of this study was the Macondo blowout and oil spill. While this disaster occurred in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, it triggered a risk governance crisis in the global offshore oil and gas industry. Hence, the Macondo disaster became a field- level crisis. Also in the North Sea region, actors responded to the disaster by initiating field-level learning. This study investigated the efforts of a relatively marginal community in the industry – the Human Factors (HF) community – to contribute to field-level learning and make sure that a similar disaster would never happen in the North Sea region. The HF community called for radical change and attempted to share its specialist knowledge about human error and incident causation with two established communities that were leading the learning response – the drilling community and senior managers from oil companies and drilling contractors. This study showed, however, that the HF community struggled to persuade the established communities to adopt their call for radical change and specialist knowledge. Based on the analysis of interviews with HF specialists, industry reports, and participant observations This chapter demonstrated that the HF communities’ attempts to share HF knowledge was complicated by the presence knowledge- and political boundaries that limited mutual engagement with the established communities in the wake of Macondo. It showed that a semantic boundary – rooted in different assumptions about human error – contributed to the creation of divergent disaster accounts and calls for action. Second, It showed how political boundaries emerged as the HF community aimed to become more established in the drilling industry. They engage in strategies of discipline recognition to justify the importance of their discipline, such as ‘using a generalized sales pitch to
justify the relevance of HF for drilling’, ‘using decontextualized, non-technical knowledge in a technically dominated environment’, and ‘justifying HF as a distinct safety discipline in a efficiency-focused management environment’. However, I demonstrated how these
strategies were largely ‘self-referential’ – i.e. focused on strengthening the status of the HF discipline by showcasing it as a distinct safety discipline worthy of attention, rather than translating HF knowledge to the drilling context to demonstrate specifically how it could positively impact drilling practices. This self-referential approach created political boundaries that limited sharing of HF knowledge. In particular, it undermined the HF community’s legitimacy, as they were unable to connect to the dominant drilling and senior
management discourses and values. Finally, the study demonstrated how the separation between the HF and drilling and senior management community practices was reinforced by the risk regime in the North Sea. The risk regime embeds institutionalized mechanisms of learning and responsibilities for risk governance that favor established communities are learning authorities and maintain community boundaries in place. Due to their justification strategies and the institutional constraints, the HF community was unable to overcome the knowledge and political boundaries and significantly influence field-level learning in the North Sea region. As such, established communities dominated field-level learning, resulting in the adaptation of established knowledge rather than radical change.
Chapter three indicated that field-level learning from disaster is a contested process in which marginal communities in a field struggle to overcome knowledge- and political boundaries to transform established knowledge and influence the learning trajectory. The study demonstrated that marginal communities need to maintain awareness of potential institutional constraints such as institutionalized values, discourses, and learning mechanisms and responsibilities. The failure of a marginal community to overcome knowledge- and political boundaries and effectively justify alternative bodies of knowledge will contribute to a learning process that revolves around refining established knowledge, practices, and goals, rather than changing deeper assumptions, values, and beliefs.
Chapter four: Field-level learning from disaster – a dynamic process of
contestation following crisis spillover
The aim of this chapter was to better understand the politics of learning from disaster following spillover of a legitimacy crisis to a different organizational field. I conceptualized politics of learning as a dynamic, contested process and investigate how and why actors continuously enact their competing interests in response to opposing actors’ actions. We proposed that spillover to a different region would introduce particular dynamics of contestation to the process of field-level learning from disaster. The research question was: How do field actors contest each other’s learning initiatives over time following spillover
of disaster implications to a different organizational field?
Similar to chapter three, the starting point is the risk governance crisis in the global offshore oil and gas industry that was triggered by the Macondo disaster. This study empirically examined how the risk governance crisis spilled over to Europe and triggered a political struggle between two actor groups - the European Commission versus a tripartite coalition from the North Sea region consisting of oil industry actors, national regulators, and trade
unions. Contestation between these actor groups was represented by two opposing risk governance narratives: ‘responsible self-regulations’ versus ‘harmonized regulation and centralized control’. These narratives had competing interpretations of fundamental risk governance principles: ‘who should be responsible for risk governance?’ – i.e. industry actors and national regulators as co-regulators versus a more distanced central regulator; ‘at
what level should risk governance be organized?’ – i.e. allow for tailoring risk governance
practices to local circumstances versus uniformly prescribed practices; and ‘what is the
appropriate improvement philosophy?’ – i.e. aiming for gradual continuous improvement
versus radical changes of the risk regime, and ‘who should have control over risk governance
and natural resource extraction?’ – i.e. control should be left to Member states versus the EU
Commission. Furthermore, the study demonstrated how the two actor groups responded to each other’s learning initiatives and strategies of contestation, adapting their own practices of learning and contestation to influence each other’s initiatives. Hence, I found that the process of contestation was dynamic. The EU Commission first aimed to implement a moratorium, but when they did not succeed in persuading national governments to implement a ban of new drilling projects, they continued by formulating a proposal for new legislation. And despite contestation of the tripartite coalition, the Commission continued with its pursuit of a Regulation. Only after intense contestation did the Commission adapt their proposal to a Directive to accommodate the objections of the tripartite coalition. On the part of the tripartite coalition, I identified three core practices of contestation emerge from conflicting narratives: ‘discrediting others’, ‘self-idealization’, and ‘proclaiming united
stance’.
Chapter four has indicated that contestation in the wake of a disaster can involve a narrative conflict that is rooted in opposing institutional discourses about risk governance. The study demonstrated how contestation is maintained over time through the dynamic interaction of discursive strategies of contestation. The study also showed that crisis spillover to a different organizational field triggers particular strategies of contestation. Actors that aim to resist crisis spillover focus on differences between institutional arrangements – e.g. the risk governance regime – in an organizational field, arguing that particular regimes are better able to avert disasters. Furthermore, the findings showed that contestation involved politics of responsibility and expertise, with which actors aimed to assume a position of authority in the learning process.