Organizational Failures, Crises and Risks

The management research is founded on clinical approach of organizations producing goods or services. It began in 1975 in high reliability seeking ones. It has defined and analyzed the complexity of the processes and structuring of organizational risks, failures and crises. It show a way of avoiding failures. A book, published in May 2003 about the decision making process of launching the Challenger shuttle and "Teacher in Space Mission" in January 1986, referring to the two commissions and the main previous works, present some of the results of the research: P. Mayer, "Challenger, the decision making misses. The mismanagement of a major risk", PUF.
Since 1996, longitudinal research has been carried out on management of high-risk projects, nuclear power plants maintenance serving as research fields. Series of case studies result out of this research activity: work and life conditions of subcontracting workers (Degot, Globokar, Girin, 1998), time management within an outage (Globokar, Degot, Girin, 1998; Globokar 2004), organization cycles of an outage, learning by experimenting during the preparation phase of an outage.
Current research has been carried out on two subjects: on the one hand, the time and knowledge management within high-risk projects, on the other hand, the elaboration and implementation of the permanent inquiry system on subcontractor's satisfaction of work and life conditions.

For further information, please contact :

Vincent Dégot or Tatjana Globokar or Paul Mayer