Industrial Safety

What does the collapse of sub-prime lending have in common with a broken jackscrew in an airliner’s tailplane? These were systems that drifted into failure. While pursuing success in a dynamic, complex environment with limited resources and multiple goal conflicts, a succession of small, everyday decisions eventually produced breakdowns on a massive scale. The growth of complexity in society has outpaced our understanding of how complex systems work and fail. This book explores complexity theory and systems thinking to understand better how complex systems drift into failure.

From our offices and homes to schools, hospitals, and restaurants, the indoor spaces where we work, learn, play, eat, and heal have an outsized impact on our performance and well-being. They affect our creativity, focus, and problem-solving ability and can make us sick - jeopardizing our future and dragging down profits in the process. Joseph Allen and John Macomber make a compelling case in this urgently needed book for why every business and home owner should make certain relatively low-cost investments a top priority.

This is the story of what the most vulnerable wage earners—gig workers, restaurant staff, early-career creatives, and minimum-wage laborers—do when the economy suddenly collapses. In Side Hustle Safety Net, Alexandrea J. Ravenelle builds on interviews with nearly two hundred gig-based and precarious workers, conducted during the height of the pandemic, to uncover the unique challenges they faced in unprecedented times.

Accidents happen, but they're usually the result of human carelessness. Charlie Morecraft found that out one August night years ago, when he literally blew himself up. A long time worker at an Exxon refinery in New Jersey, Morecraft was rushing to leave for vacation and too macho to bother following standard safety procedures when performing a late night repair job. The result? Burns covering 50 percent of his body, months upon months of hospitalization and rehab, dozens of surgeries, and emotional suffering.