A FALLIBLE SAFETY SYSTEM - INSTITUTIONALIZED IRRATIONALITY IN THE OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS-INDUSTRY

The circumstances surrounding the explosion on platform Piper Alpha, July 6th 1988, are analysed in order to account for the failure of the principal administrative safety system, the Permit to Work. It is discovered that the system was incoherent and that failures to follow its procedures were endemic and normal. Two consequent problems are addressed. First, why were such unprocedural practices accepted, unremedied and engaged in by all levels of management; attention is drawn to the effects on work organisation of sub-contract employment and to structurally generated limitations of managerial expertise. Second, is it possible to sustain conventional sociological models of organisational rationality in a setting of such institutionalised irrationality; attention is drawn to the significance of the ritualisation of procedure in situations of limited control. Therefore, the necessity of developing models within sociology of non-rational action and organisation is noted.