COMMUNITY, TECHNOLOGY, AND RISK - COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING IN THE AVIATION INDUSTRY

Highly hazardous activities are currently overwhelmingly researched wi thin the context of the organizations that produce or exploit them. An alysts have varying degrees of confidence in the capacity of these org anizations to manage complex risks and hazards. Yet we often overlook the fact that the actual management of these technologies is entrusted to a very significant degree by organizations to occupational communi ties, whether they be engineers, pilots, air traffic controllers, or s cientists. These communities usually straddle organizational boundarie s, and state and public expectations invest them with substantial coun tervailing power [15] with respect to the organizations that actually employ them. Although tensions arise between the professional and comm ercial/bureaucratic agenda, the ''cosmopolitan'' perspective of the oc cupational community very frequently prevails over the ''local'' persp ective of the organizational bureaucracy. An overemphasis in research on the dysfunctions (real or asserted) of organizations can conceal a record of successful management of hazard by occupational communities. This paper arises from research carried out among aviation profession als: air traffic controllers, pilots, engineers, and cabin crew. It ar gues that modern civil aviation should not always be viewed as a serie s of ''accidents waiting to happen,'' but rather as a celebration of l ong-term collective well-being in a complex sociotechnical environment . The wider lesson for other technologies may be that we are already b etter at handling significant hazards than we are frequently willing t o admit- altho;gh this modesty may itself be functional to our search for improved management of risk and hazard. The research was carried o ut whilst the author was 1993 Lloyd's Tercentenary Fellow, Templeton C ollege, University of Oxford.