Complex socio-technical systems suffer increasingly from systemic risks. A systemic risk is a risk that originates from multiple sources, affects multiple agents, propagates quickly or unexpectedly among individual parts or components of the system, and if left unchecked can cause a breakdown of the system. This research seeks to explain the technologies of risk control in such complex systems. Three main issues are explored: i) the elevated level of systemic risks in complex socio-technical systems; ii) the mindful risk control mechanisms in complex socio-technical systems; and iii) the role of information technology in containing and mitigating risks in complex socio-technical systems.
The research is grounded in the literature on risk, theories of collective mindfulness, general dialectics, and IT practices. Since little prior research has been conducted on systemic risk, a multi-site case study methodology is followed. As part of the ongoing Path Creation project sponsored by the NSF (IIS-0208963), the first research site is a highly complex architectural project by Frank Gehry and his firm Gehry Partners, L.L.C.: the Peter B. Lewis Building. The second research site is the Akron Art Museum (AAM) designed by renowned Vienna architect Coop Himmelb(l)au. Both architects and their partners successfully used the 3D CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software, CATIA (Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application) and Rhino (Rhinoceros) respectively, to construct radical architectures with dauntingly complex geometric surfaces in spite of increased systemic risks.
The major findings include: First, complex socio-technical systems suffer from an elevated level of systemic risks which are not quantifiable as chances or probabilities but are emergent, nonlinear and whose sources are difficult to pinpoint in advance. Second, organizations combat systemic risk through “collective mindfulness”(Weick et al. 1999). Third, organizations create and maintain the collective mindfulness by orchestrating the dialectical tensions between mindful and mindless acting and thinking amongcross its members. Finally, information technologies, in combination with other organizational mechanisms, can contribute to collective mindfulness by attending to both mindful and mindless behaviors, thereby increasing the effectiveness of combating systemic risk.