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Challenges in Designing Resilient Socio-technical Systems: A Case Study of Railway Tunnel Projects

Cedergren, Alexander LU (2011) Resilience Engineering Symposium, 2011
Abstract
This paper presents a case study of decision-making at the design stage of a socio-technical system where resilience at the global level of the system was constrained by the local perspectives adopted by the different stakeholders. The study is based on interviews with key decision-makers involved in the design stage of six railway tunnel projects in Sweden. The results show that differences in roles and perspectives among the involved actors created double binds and led to extensive discussions and deadlocks during decision-making in the majority of the studied projects. In these projects agreements could only be reached by relying on the outcome from previous railway tunnel projects, regardless differences in project-specific aspects. A... (More)
This paper presents a case study of decision-making at the design stage of a socio-technical system where resilience at the global level of the system was constrained by the local perspectives adopted by the different stakeholders. The study is based on interviews with key decision-makers involved in the design stage of six railway tunnel projects in Sweden. The results show that differences in roles and perspectives among the involved actors created double binds and led to extensive discussions and deadlocks during decision-making in the majority of the studied projects. In these projects agreements could only be reached by relying on the outcome from previous railway tunnel projects, regardless differences in project-specific aspects. A significant impact from local actors during decision-making increased the potential for suboptimizations and resulted in a limited focus on the system’s resilience from a regional and national perspective. The findings point at the need for more emphasis in the field of resilience engineering on crossorganisational aspects in order to gain increased understanding of the challenges related to improving resilience of socio-technical systems. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Resilience Engineering
host publication
Proceedings of the fourth resilience engineering symposium
editor
Hollnagel, Erik ; Rigaud, Eric and Besnard, Denis
pages
7 pages
publisher
Presses des Mines
conference name
Resilience Engineering Symposium, 2011
conference location
Sophia Antipolis, France
conference dates
2011-06-08 - 2011-06-10
ISBN
9782911256479
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
48a9a91e-3f88-4a57-82e3-865ce46b7bcb (old id 2374633)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 10:06:16
date last changed
2018-11-21 20:56:45
@inproceedings{48a9a91e-3f88-4a57-82e3-865ce46b7bcb,
  abstract     = {{This paper presents a case study of decision-making at the design stage of a socio-technical system where resilience at the global level of the system was constrained by the local perspectives adopted by the different stakeholders. The study is based on interviews with key decision-makers involved in the design stage of six railway tunnel projects in Sweden. The results show that differences in roles and perspectives among the involved actors created double binds and led to extensive discussions and deadlocks during decision-making in the majority of the studied projects. In these projects agreements could only be reached by relying on the outcome from previous railway tunnel projects, regardless differences in project-specific aspects. A significant impact from local actors during decision-making increased the potential for suboptimizations and resulted in a limited focus on the system’s resilience from a regional and national perspective. The findings point at the need for more emphasis in the field of resilience engineering on crossorganisational aspects in order to gain increased understanding of the challenges related to improving resilience of socio-technical systems.}},
  author       = {{Cedergren, Alexander}},
  booktitle    = {{Proceedings of the fourth resilience engineering symposium}},
  editor       = {{Hollnagel, Erik and Rigaud, Eric and Besnard, Denis}},
  isbn         = {{9782911256479}},
  keywords     = {{Resilience Engineering}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  publisher    = {{Presses des Mines}},
  title        = {{Challenges in Designing Resilient Socio-technical Systems: A Case Study of Railway Tunnel Projects}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/5461783/2374635}},
  year         = {{2011}},
}