Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Roe, Emery
• Schulman, Paul
• van Eeten, Michel
• de Bruijne, Mark

Titel

High-Reliability Bandwidth Management in Large Technical Systems: Findings and Implications of Two Case Studies

Ist Teil von

• Journal of public administration research and theory, 2005-04, Vol.15 (2), p.263-280

Ort / Verlag

Oxford: Oxford University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2005

Quelle

PAIS Index

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A great deal of interest has arisen among organization theorists and practitioners about the high-reliability management of large hazardous technical systems and society's critical service infrastructures. However, much of the reliability analysis is centered on particular organizations that have command and control over their technical cores. Many technical systems, including large-scale water supplies and deregulated electricity generation, are not the exclusive domain of single organizations. This article reports on the strategy of managing performance fluctuations (what we call “bandwidth management”) in maintaining reliability over time in two critical infrastructures: large-scale water supplies and a large, deregulated electricity grid. The systems studied were reliable because high reliability was achieved not through invariance with respect to the control of key organizational processes, but rather through the careful management of fluctuations in core processes within specified bandwidths. Further, we describe a surprising advantage that complexity and tight coupling might afford in achieving reliability within these bandwidths.