Session 4 - How investigation committees stimulate and block learning from disasters

Location

University of Nevada Las Vegas, Stan Fulton Building

Start Date

1-6-2007 2:23 PM

End Date

1-6-2007 2:30 PM

Description

The heart of this essay is a small study of four investigation reports, two from Holland and two from the United States. Based on this study we’ll present a fairly simple typology of approaches by investigators for interpreting the facts that they find. From the perspective of a manager that made a decision that proved to be disastrous we’ll explain the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches for learning. From the perspective of the investigator we’ll explain the logic of these approaches. Confronting both perspectives with each other explains why it is so hard for managers to learn from investigation reports.

Keywords

Disaster investigations; Emergency management -- Evaluation; Investigations -- Methodology; Investigative approaches; Management; Netherlands; United States

Disciplines

Public Administration | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration

Language

English

Permissions

Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or use interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the article. Publisher copyright policy allows author to archive post-print (author’s final manuscript). When post-print is available or publisher policy changes, the article will be deposited


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Jun 1st, 2:23 PM Jun 1st, 2:30 PM

Session 4 - How investigation committees stimulate and block learning from disasters

University of Nevada Las Vegas, Stan Fulton Building

The heart of this essay is a small study of four investigation reports, two from Holland and two from the United States. Based on this study we’ll present a fairly simple typology of approaches by investigators for interpreting the facts that they find. From the perspective of a manager that made a decision that proved to be disastrous we’ll explain the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches for learning. From the perspective of the investigator we’ll explain the logic of these approaches. Confronting both perspectives with each other explains why it is so hard for managers to learn from investigation reports.