We contribute to the learning from disaster literature by conceptualization learning from disaster as a contested process in which communities struggle over the transformation of knowledge at epistemic boundaries. In particular, we argue that the inability of marginal actors to overcome knowledge- and political boundaries between themselves and established communities in the wake of a disaster results in ‘paradigmatic learning’ (Deschamps et al., 1997) in an organizational field – i.e. refining established knowledge
and practices, thereby reinforcing them, rather than changing deeper assumption, values, and beliefs.
Research on (technological) risk has argued that risk is heavily contested; different actors have different interests and perspectives on the nature and desirability of risk, leading to the production of conflicting knowledge claims and competing risk discourses – between experts and laypeople as well as among experts (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990; 1991; Power, 2007; Rosa, Renn, & McCright, 2014). Following disasters these differences become explicit, as traditional authority relations in a field are destabilized (Hoffman, 1999) and different epistemic communities invoke different mental models of how incidents are caused and should be prevented in the future (Carroll, 1998; Deschamps et al., 1997; Gherardi & Nicolini, 2002; Hoffman & Jennings, 2011). Hence, the notion of politics of expertise (Beck, 1992; Fischer, 1990) is central to the topics of risk and learning from disaster.
Bunderson and Reagan’s (2011) review of literature on status and learning suggests that when social hierarchies become unstable – like in the wake of a disaster – high- and low-ranking actors assume different learning attitudes. Low-ranking actors become more proactive and change-oriented, while high-ranking actors become more reactive and defensive. This suggests that in the wake of a disaster, marginal communities may challenge the expertise and authority of established communities, and prompt radical learning initiatives. Similarly, the literature on institutional change shows that disruptive events, like disasters, may drive marginal communities to challenge authority relations and aim for institutional change (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012; Hoffman, 1999). This study confirmed that a disaster triggers a struggle between communities with conflicting calls for action. Our study showed that marginal communities may perceive themselves as having superior knowledge and expecting recognition of their expertise from established communities. Hence, marginal communities attempts to contribute to learning processes in the wake of disaster may be understood as having a dual function: improving prevention, as well as occupying a more central role in the organizational field. Nevertheless, we found that the marginal community experienced difficulties in their effort to influence field-level learning from disaster. We showed that the different understandings of how accidents are caused, and the strategic efforts for discipline recognition respectively created semantic and pragmatic knowledge boundaries (Carlile, 2002; 2004), which they were unable to overcome. Other studies on organizational and institutional change have indicated that a marginal community may be able to alter established authority relations when their proposal for change – meant to improve their authority position – draws on
traditional values (Lawrence, Malhotra, & Morris, 2012), familiar discursive resources from other institutional contexts (Levina & Orlikowski, 2009), or the established community’s interpretative schemes (Howard-Grenville, 2007). These studies suggest that a change initiative by a marginal community on one hand needs to radically break with existing authority relations, while still resonating with established and recognizable cultural resources. Yet, in our case, we found that the HF community did not connect to established cultural resources, in particular the dominant drilling and management discourses in the industry. They aimed to disrupt existing authority relations, but operated largely from their own frame of reference. Therefore, their strategies conflicted with established beliefs and values of the established drilling and senior management communities. For example, justifications based on generalization of success stories in other industries created a tension with the institutionalized belief that drilling operations are unique endeavors. Hence, our findings showed that the marginal community’s proposal for radical change did not connect to established values and discourses. Instead they aimed to share their knowledge by simply transferring it to the established communities, while the presence of semantic and pragmatic boundaries required them to engage in more active transformation to create common ground (Bechky, 2003; Carlile, 2002; 2004; Gherardi & Nicolini 2000b; 2002). This limited their potential to participate in field-level learning processes in the wake of disaster.
Studies on knowledge transformation between epistemic communities have argued that dominant epistemic community are likely to become self-referential, refining established knowledge and reinforcing assumptions and values (Gherardi & Nicolini, 2002; Roberts, 2006). This study showed that in absence of new knowledge inputs by marginal communities, learning from disaster focused primarily on learning technical lessons, like more technical training and improved competence management procedures. The literature on learning from incidents in high hazard industries has indicated that learning from disaster tends to be dominated by principles of technical rationality, represented by technical experts like engineers (Carroll, 1995; 1998; Carroll et al., 2002; Dekker, 2014; Elliott & Smith, 1993; 2006; Perin, 1995). From this technical paradigm, people are perceived as sources of problems that have to be constrained, often through increased technical training or creating more detailed procedures (Carroll, 1995; 1998). Hence, our findings confirmed the dominance of a technical paradigm in learning from disaster in the offshore oil and gas industry. In line with other studies of learning from disaster, our study confirms that learning from disaster frequently does not go beyond the ‘paradigmatic’ level (Deschamps
et al., 1997), hence reinforcing the technical paradigm in the wake of a disaster (Elliott & Smith, 2006; Hoffman & Jennings, 2011).
Our investigation of the attempts by HF specialists to manifest themselves as a distinct safety discipline has several similarities with Giroux and Taylor’s (2002) investigation of the attempts of quality engineers to put quality management (QM) on the map as a distinct profession. For instance, Giroux and Taylor also identified how the attempt to create a distinct field of expertise involved a struggle for management recognition and budget. In the first phase of justification, quality specialists were advised to “speak the language of money” (p. 506) and to frame QM as an opportunity to attain economic objectives. We found that some HF specialist made similar remarks in our interviews. However, Giroux and Taylor found that “translating specialists’ knowledge into a language that top management can understand is not sufficient to transform it into an accepted truth” (p. 509). Only in the context of economic and political crises that challenged the competitive position of US companies versus Japanese companies, was the QM community able to successfully justify QM as an American solution and competitive obligation that companies had implement to survive. The subsequent explosion of popularity allowed the QM community to solidify their position by framing the effectiveness of QM as undeniable truth. Relating these insights to our case, it seems that the HF community is only in the first phase of justification, and may need to capitalize on future crises to further the HF discipline.