2.8 SUMMARY

Using the medium of a real-life accident case study, this chapter sought to reveal the nature of complex, systemic problems and why they create so much difficulty for managers and decision-makers. One clear justification for this research is the savings in human lives and money that might result from development of more effective management of systemic problems.

This chapter has demonstrated how concept mapping can be used to reveal systemic structures, how concepts are strongly coupled and how complex interrelationships can cloud managers’ vision. The importance of stakeholder perspective and organisational politics and culture were also revealed. The inability of key stakeholders to recognise evolving systemic patterns of events led to failures in understanding, learning and management of risks. Armed with this appreciation of complex problems, we are equipped to widen our search.

In the next chapter, detailed analysis is undertaken of a number of other accident case studies with the intent of determining whether there are common threads. The results are then examined to see how this information might be used both to help us understand how to identify and assess risks with the goal of managing them more effectively.