Close Calls
Organizations, near misses, alarms, and early warnings

Conference Announcement and Call for Papers  

March 26-27 2009

This conference, held by the ESRC Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR) at the London School of Economics, is intended as a platform to explore the way organizations of all kinds, including regulatory bodies, define and deal with risk events such as errors, near misses and close calls as part of their risk management practices.

Near miss analysis is normally associated with high reliability organizations, and specifically safety management in the nuclear, chemical and airline industries. In theory, tolerances are specified and built into technological infrastructures, and investigations are required when these tolerances are breached. Yet what is the potential reach and applicability of this kind of analysis beyond these specific contexts? For example: how might financial institutions develop early warning capacities as part of their specification of risk appetite? What kind of event would constitute a ‘near miss’ for a food retailer? Do management information systems trigger remedial action at the right time?

These questions are of fundamental importance to an expanding risk management agenda in both public and private organizations – and is especially salient for regulatory bodies seeking to develop ‘early warning’ intelligence and foresight capacity at the inter-organizational and systemic level. From ‘signals passed at speed’ in the case of railways, to ‘clinical error’ in medicine, to ‘internal control weaknesses’ in financial institutions, we hope that this conference will address a wide range of ‘near miss-type’ practices and issues in different fields.

We encourage submissions which explore how organizations and organizational fields process risk events in their broadest sense. Empirical and theoretical papers are invited from scholars of accounting, crisis and contingency management, information systems, political science, psychology, organization studies, sociology, and regulation.

If you wish to submit a paper, please send an abstract or, better, the full paper by December 1st 2008 to Michael Power (m.k.power@lse.ac.uk) or John Downer (J.R.Downer@lse.ac.uk) at CARR, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Our on-line registration and payment service is available at our Close Calls registration page. If you have any queries, or prefer to pay by cheque, please contact Elizabeth Darnall at CARR regulation@lse.ac.uk.
The conference fee payable in advance will be:

Numbers will be limited, so please apply early to avoid disappointment.

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