Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 893 )

• Why Do Regulatory Organizations Fail?

  

  Why is Charles Perrow a pessimist about government regulation?Perrow is a leading researcher in the sociology of organizations, and he is a singular expert on... Read more

  Posted on 07 December 2019 SOCIETY

• The Second Primitive Accumulation

  

  One of the more memorable parts of Capital is Marx's description of the “so-called primitive accumulation of capital” — the historical process where rural peopl... Read more

  Posted on 01 December 2019 SOCIETY

• Organizations as Open Systems

  

  Key to understanding the "ontology of government" is the empirical and theoretical challenge of understanding how organizations work. Read more

  Posted on 23 November 2019 SOCIETY

• Personalized Power at the Local Level

  

  How does government work? We often understand this question as one involving the institutions and actors within the Federal government. Read more

  Posted on 19 November 2019 SOCIETY

• Electronic Health Records and Medical Mistakes

  

  Electronic Health Record systems (EHRs) have been broadly implemented by hospitals and health systems around the country as a way of increasing the accuracy,... Read more

  Posted on 14 November 2019 SOCIETY

• Twelve Years of Understanding Society

  

  Understanding Society has now reached its twelfth anniversary of continuous publication. This represents 1,271 posts, and over 1.3 million words. Read more

  Posted on 06 November 2019 SOCIETY

• O-rings and Production Pressure

  

  Allan McDonald's Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster (2009) has given me a somewhat different understanding of the... Read more

  Posted on 03 November 2019 SOCIETY

• Ethical Principles for Assessing New Technologies

  

  Technologies and technology systems have deep and pervasive effects on the human beings who live within their reach. How do normative principles and principles... Read more

  Posted on 29 October 2019 SOCIETY

• Regulatory Delegation at the FAA

  

  Earlier posts have focused on the role of inadequate regulatory oversight as part of the tragedy of the Boeing 737 MAX (link, link). Read more

  Posted on 28 October 2019 SOCIETY

• The Tempos of Capitalism

  

  I've been interested in the economic history of capitalism since the 1970s, and there are a few titles that stand out in my memory. There were the Marxist and... Read more

  Posted on 27 October 2019 SOCIETY

• Experimental Sociology of Norms and Decision-making

  

  The discipline of experimental economics is now a familiar one. It is a field that attempts to probe and test the behavioral assumptions of the theory of... Read more

  Posted on 21 October 2019 SOCIETY

• Organizational Culture

  

  It is of both intellectual and practical interest to understand how organizations function and how the actors within them choose the actions that they pursue. Read more

  Posted on 10 October 2019 SOCIETY

• The Functionality of Artifacts

  

  We think of artifacts as being "functional" in a specific sense: their characteristics are well designed and adjusted for their "intended" use. Read more

  Posted on 30 September 2019 SOCIETY

• Flood Plains and Land Use

  

  An increasingly pressing consequence of climate change is the rising threat of flood in coastal and riverine communities. And yet a combination of Federal and... Read more

  Posted on 30 September 2019 SOCIETY

• Kojève on Freedom

  An earlier post highlighted Alexandre Kojève's presentation of Hegel's rich conception of labor, freedom, and human self-creation. Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2019 SOCIETY

• The US Chemical Safety Board

  

  The Federal agency responsible for investigating chemical and petrochemical accidents in the United States is the Chemical Safety Board (link). Read more

  Posted on 03 September 2019 SOCIETY

• Testing the NRC

  

  Serious nuclear accidents are rare but potentially devastating to people, land, and agriculture. (It appears that minor to moderate nuclear accidents are not... Read more

  Posted on 12 August 2019 SOCIETY

• Hegel on Labor and Freedom

  

  Hegel provided a powerful conception of human beings in the world and a rich conception of freedom. Key to that conception is the idea of self-creation through... Read more

  Posted on 11 August 2019 SOCIETY

• The Sociology of Scientific Discipline Formation

  

  There was a time in the philosophy of science when it may have been believed that scientific knowledge develops in a logical, linear way from observation and... Read more

  Posted on 09 August 2019 SOCIETY

• Pervasive Organizational and Regulatory Failures

  

  It is intriguing to observe how pervasive organizational and regulatory failures are in our collective lives. Once you are sensitized to these factors, you see... Read more

  Posted on 01 August 2019 SOCIETY