Reconciliation can lead to better application: A rejoinder to Perrow (2009)

In his brief commentary, Perrow raises four issues. First, he alludes to how the misuse of bureaucratic power could explain some accidents. Second, he reiterates that normal accidents occur owing to the characteristics inherent in a system, and such accidents, irrespective of whether high reliability practices are followed or not, are inevitable. Third, Perrow asserts that complexity and coupling are independent of time of operation. The time dimension’s irrelevance, he claims, ought to be apparent from his analysis of normal accidents in systems such as the air transport and chemical industry (see Perrow, 1984). Fourth, Perrow implies that High Reliability Theory (HRT) cannot explain the sub-class of accidents that Normal Accident Theory (NAT) concerns itself with. He thus makes a case for retaining NAT alongside other theories and finds little value in our reconciliation. In fact, he finds the reconciliation inappropriate because we supposedly err in implicating time. We respond to the four issues in turn.