Scope and Limits of Extreme Situations for Highly Reliable Organizations: A Pragmatic Interpretation
Résumé
This chapter draws on John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy to question the empirical and theoretical limits of extreme situations. It then aims to specify some conditions under which the use of the concept seems to be most successful for organizational sciences in general and for high reliability organizations, in particular. The study of extreme situations is justified both empirically, in terms of helping organizations deal with this increasingly frequent phenomenon, and theoretically, in terms of entering into issues that are not usually addressed within the usual framework of organizational theories. The pragmatist approach leads people to consider that any situation can potentially be extreme. In other words, the extremity of a situation is present at the state of potential that is gradually updated during an investigation or more brutally under the effect of a sudden event.