“Lessons learned”? Studying learning devices and processes in relation to technological accidents

Résumé 0

How do organizations and sociotechnical systems “learn lessons” from accidents? After the Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011, the immediate and most significant direct response by industry, governments and regulatory agencies was that they would learn from the accident. Such framing of accidents, disasters or crises as opportunities to improve the operation and regulation of sociotechnical systems has become an increasingly prominent feature of discourses following adverse events. This learning idiom is also taken up by social scientists who study accidents, be these nuclear, chemical, air traffic, railway, oil spills, or “natural” disasters. Such studies claim to provide a more complex account of accident causes and consequences , compared to the narratives produced by institutional actors.