Routine Deaths

Fatal Accidents in the Oil Industry

Bibliographic Data

ID3471607
AuthorsChris Wright (0009-0008-7791-7630), Christopher S Wright (corresponding author)
Year1986
Volume34
Issue2
Pages265-289
Publication date1986-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-954x.1986.tb02702.x
OpenAlexW2009491981
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited2

This paper is a study in the relatively neglected field of the Sociology of Accidents and is concerned with fatalities in the UK Offshore Oil Industry. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the social and organizational causes of these accidents. Common sense and expert opinion both present industrial accidents as products of extra organizational abnormality but evidence from this research locates the causes of accidents in work organization and dependence on bureaucratic rationality. In particular it is shown that the hazardous situations in which the accidents occurred were themselves largely the products of two aspects of the formal organization of work, the 'speed-up' and the practice of 'sub-contracting'. It is demonstrated that the common sense equation of the 'normal' and the 'routine' inhibited recognition of the organization causes of these accidents. Finally it is argued that, since there is little support for the view that the accident were produced by unique working conditions in the offshore industry, it is therefore likely that the causes of accidents in this industry will be found to exist in other industries

Accident (philosophy) · Bureaucracy · Business · Common sense · Epistemology · Field (mathematics) · Petroleum industry · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Rationality · Sociology · Work (physics) · Engineering · Law · Occupational Health and Safety Research

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