So we had ended the test and we were going to stop. It had been decided to stop. It was only
me, arriving at this point, I had no intention of stopping the injection of water. Furthermore,
they were talking about stopping, but we didn’t even know how long it would go on for.
They could have said thirty minutes, or more. But stopping with no guarantee of recovery.
For me, there was no question of following such an order. I decided to do it my way. So I
announced to the people at the crisis table that we would stop, but I quietly took the ‘safety’
group leader to one side, XXXXX, which was in charge of the injection and I told him that I
was going to announce to anyone who would listen that we would stop the injection, but
that he, at all costs, must not stop sending water. Then I prepared a report for headquarters
to say that we’d stopped [12, p. 188].
This manoeuvre was also hidden from certain members of the crisis unit. This
suggests that amongst the network of actors in the field, there were some who
would execute orders from the Director, which were not in line with the instructions
issued by headquarters. This indicates that the internal authority of the Director was
such that members of the safety group would follow his orders rather than
instructions from headquarters.
The procedure implemented at this time was therefore based on the capacity to
find technical solutions in an emergency situation and networks of actors who
shared the Director’s beliefs. These networks of actors were responsible for the
production of the rules that were applied at the time.
In a crisis, social regulation takes places in compressed time; it is the result of
negotiations between headquarters, supervisory and government authorities and
independent regulators. The decisions of the Director could only be translated into
action with the consent of his team, through a process of negotiation. This is
reflected in both the venting procedure (that would be delayed several times for
technical and human reasons) and the decision to inject seawater, which was the
subject of an internal search for technical solutions and led to the decision to carry
on with the action against the orders from headquarters.
5 Discussion
From the perspective of the sociology of organizations, the reinterpretation of major
accidents and particularly the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
plant leads to questions about respect for rules and procedure in crisis management.
We argue that a crisis should not cause the strict application of control regulations
that are the result of procedures that were established in advance. Decision-making
and the rules that apply should be the result of negotiations between decisions taken
by headquarters and independent, on-the-ground regulation that takes into account
the context.
An analysis of the in-depth feedback from the Fukushima Daiichi accident
suggests that the capacity of the plant’s teams to find new solutions to deal with the
various problems is wholly characteristic of the HRO as described by Weick and
Sutcliffe [13]. In other words, a such organization is able to identify and anticipate
failure, overcome a priori assumptions, and comply with (or defer to) authority and
52
C. Martin
me, arriving at this point, I had no intention of stopping the injection of water. Furthermore,
they were talking about stopping, but we didn’t even know how long it would go on for.
They could have said thirty minutes, or more. But stopping with no guarantee of recovery.
For me, there was no question of following such an order. I decided to do it my way. So I
announced to the people at the crisis table that we would stop, but I quietly took the ‘safety’
group leader to one side, XXXXX, which was in charge of the injection and I told him that I
was going to announce to anyone who would listen that we would stop the injection, but
that he, at all costs, must not stop sending water. Then I prepared a report for headquarters
to say that we’d stopped [12, p. 188].
This manoeuvre was also hidden from certain members of the crisis unit. This
suggests that amongst the network of actors in the field, there were some who
would execute orders from the Director, which were not in line with the instructions
issued by headquarters. This indicates that the internal authority of the Director was
such that members of the safety group would follow his orders rather than
instructions from headquarters.
The procedure implemented at this time was therefore based on the capacity to
find technical solutions in an emergency situation and networks of actors who
shared the Director’s beliefs. These networks of actors were responsible for the
production of the rules that were applied at the time.
In a crisis, social regulation takes places in compressed time; it is the result of
negotiations between headquarters, supervisory and government authorities and
independent regulators. The decisions of the Director could only be translated into
action with the consent of his team, through a process of negotiation. This is
reflected in both the venting procedure (that would be delayed several times for
technical and human reasons) and the decision to inject seawater, which was the
subject of an internal search for technical solutions and led to the decision to carry
on with the action against the orders from headquarters.
5 Discussion
From the perspective of the sociology of organizations, the reinterpretation of major
accidents and particularly the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
plant leads to questions about respect for rules and procedure in crisis management.
We argue that a crisis should not cause the strict application of control regulations
that are the result of procedures that were established in advance. Decision-making
and the rules that apply should be the result of negotiations between decisions taken
by headquarters and independent, on-the-ground regulation that takes into account
the context.
An analysis of the in-depth feedback from the Fukushima Daiichi accident
suggests that the capacity of the plant’s teams to find new solutions to deal with the
various problems is wholly characteristic of the HRO as described by Weick and
Sutcliffe [13]. In other words, a such organization is able to identify and anticipate
failure, overcome a priori assumptions, and comply with (or defer to) authority and
52
C. Martin