Acceptable Risk?

Organizations and modern technology give us much of what we value, but they have also given us Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Bhopal. The question at the heart of this paradox is "What is acceptable risk?" Based on his examination of the 1981 contamination of an office building in Binghamton, New York, Lee Clarke's compelling study argues that organizational processes are the key to understanding how some risks rather than others are defined as acceptable. He finds a pattern of decision-making based on relationships among organizations rather than the authority of individuals or single agencies.

Lee Clarke is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University

List of Tables and Figures	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
List of Abbreviations	p. xiii
Creating Risks	p. 1
The Binghamton State Office Building	p. 4
Organizational Anarchy and Personal Jeopardy	p. 9
Organizational Chaos: Beginning Decontamination and Medical Surveillance	p. 14
Decontamination	p. 15
Medical Surveillance	p. 16
Interpreting Organizational Anarchy	p. 20
Constricting the Field of Organizations	p. 30
Local Agencies	p. 31
County Agencies	p. 41
State Agencies	p. 43
Federal Agencies	p. 48
An Excursus on Resolving Organizational Dilemmas: The County Government's Risk	p. 59
Defining the Problem	p. 60
Assessing Consequences	p. 65
Ordering Alternatives	p. 71
Constructing Acceptable Risk Assessments	p. 75
Accepting Risk	p. 77
Organizing Medical Surveillance	p. 84
Assessing the Problem	p. 85
A Smooth Beginning	p. 86
Turmoil and Tumult	p. 90
Malleable Science	p. 96
The Emergent Division of Labor	p. 101
Postscript to Medical Surveillance	p. 107
Organizing Decontamination	p. 114
Chemical Problems	p. 115
An Attempted Solution	p. 117
The Context for Decision Making	p. 122
The Solution	p. 127
Symbolic Risk: Decontamination or Destruction?	p. 132
The Exposed	p. 139
Exposed Workers	p. 140
Organizing Dissent	p. 149
Organizing Risk	p. 157
Disruption of Routine	p. 159
An Interorganizational Garbage Can	p. 160
The Action Set	p. 169
The Structural Basis of Individual Dissent	p. 171
Theories of Choice	p. 172
Symbols and Organizational Deceit	p. 176
The Sociology of Risk	p. 178
The Players	p. 183
A Methodological Accounting	p. 189
References	p. 201
List of Interviews	p. 219
Index	p. 221
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