Flirting with Disaster Why Accidents Are Rarely Accidental

by Gerstein, Marc S.; Ellsberg, Michael; Ellsberg, Daniel; Ellsberg, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9781402761836
• ISBN10: 140276183X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-02
• Publisher: Union Square Pr

Summary

Flirting with Disaster does what Blink did for intuition. The Black Swan for probability, and Freakonomics for microeconomics: offer an engaging, in-depth view of a complex and crucial topic.

Author Biography

Marc Gerstein holds a masters and PhD in management from the Sloan School of Management, MIT. He has taught at Columbia Business School and Sloan. He currently heads Marc Gerstein Associates, Ltd., a management consulting firm. His writing on strategy and organizational dynamics has been published by the Sloan Management Review and the Journal of Business Strategy. Michael Ellsberg edited his father Daniel Ellsberg's best-seller Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg is a lecturer, writer, and activist. For more information, see www.flirtingwithdisaster.net.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Learning from Past Disasters, Preventing Future Ones	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
The Bystanders Among Us	p. 11
Human Biases and Distortions	p. 23
Understanding Uncertainty: Why Did So Many People Bet Against Katrina?	p. 50
Space Shuttle Challenger: Cold, Warm, and Hot Causes of Disasters	p. 66
Chernobyl, Faulty Design, and the Interplay of Humans and Technology	p. 92
The Vioxx Disaster and BP: The Seduction of Profits	p. 126
When All the Backups Failed: How American F-15s Accidentally Shot Down Two U.S. Army Black Hawks	p. 146
Butterfly Wings and Stone Heads: How Complexity Influences Catastrophe in Policy Decisions	p. 170
The Collapse of Arthur Andersen: The Role of Organizational Culture	p. 192
When Countries Go Bankrupt: The Prisoner's Dilemma Writ Large	p. 207
What Have We Learned? What Can We Do?	p. 240
Advice for Leaders	p. 270
Afterword: When the Leaders Are the Problem	p. 285
Acknowledgments	p. 295
Notes	p. 299
Sources	p. 313
About the Authors	p. 329
Index	p. 331
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