The commoditization of
societal safety
Petter Almklov and Stian Antonsen
NTNU Social Research Ltd
The authors
• Stian Antonsen:
– Sociologist
– Safety culture, organizational safety
• Petter Almklov:
– Engineer and social anthropologist
– Knowledge, technology and communication
Background
• The project:
– Critical infrastructures, public sector reorganization and
societal safety
– Electricity supply (network companies), water supply
and telecom
– Effects of PSR/NPM on Societal safety
Exploration of ideas
• Purpose of this paper is to explore some
generic ideas addressing the core question
of the project.
• Discuss some concepts.
• The examples provided from the electricity
network business are simplified, and not
our final analysis.
Societal safety
• “society’s ability to maintain critical social
functions, to protect the life and health of
the citizens and to meet the citizens’ basic
requirements in a variety of stress
situations” Olsen et al 2007
Safety and societal safety is intangible:
• A non-event (that bad things don’t happen)
• Based on many unknowns (one do not know all
the things that should not happen)
• Dynamic (what is safe today may not be safe
tomorrow)
• Never completely local (to be safe, some things
must not happen elsewhere as well)
..these aspects elude definitive explication
whereas NPM implies a discourse and
organization of work as ...
• Modules
– Implies subdividing complex tasks into smaller units
connected by specified interfaces
– Implies subdividing integrated organizations into smaller
units connected by specified interfaces
• Commodities: standardized tasks that can be
“shopped” from the cheapest vendor
Organisasjon
Organization before outsourcing or
internal reorganization
Organisasjon
Modules: Boundaries are defined.
Deliverables and responsibilities are
clarified. Accountability, measureability,
contracts, value definition.
Organisasjon
The explicated formal relations are
maintained, but new organization.
 Greater dependency of governing
systems.
The concepts, loosely defined
• Modularization: Development towards regarding work as
networks of discrete entities (tasks) with specified
boundaries and characteristics, and of building
organizations according to the same principle.
• Commoditization: Development towards standardization
of a product or a task to the extent that it is completely
interchangeable, and price is the only variable quality.
Link to NPM
• Both of these processes accompany NPM
• Our observations: A lot of “interface work”:
– Defining contracts, specifications responsibilities, KPI’s, prices, etc
• Dividing work into modules makes outsourcing and control
by benchmarking possible
• Commoditization a way to obtain competition between
suppliers
A quote, and some questions
• ..societal safety is not what [the regulator] have ordered. If that is the
product they want, they have to specify that.
• How do you specify societal safety in the discourse of NPM.
• How does a vague, holistic, dynamic concept like SS translate into
mechanical specifications between modules, or the standardized
specifications of commodities.
• How do you create specifications for a series of modularized and
standardized tasks so as to make sure the overall robustness in terms
of societal safety is maintained?
• What problems arise?
Examples on the effects of NPM
• Modularized network industry:
– Its function strongly separated from production.
– Governmental control through standardized benchmarking systems
• Very heterogeneous industry
• Complex formulas
• Commoditization / modularization of tasks leads to loss of
“unspecified” aspects of work with relevance for safety
–
–
–
–
local knowledge
system knowledge (beyond specified requirements)
ownership
informal networks etc
Continued
• Optimization of efficiency within each module: How to
specify necessary global and local redundancy in
contracts/specifications.
• Optimization for the known, less resilience?
• Integrated expertise “grown” in integrated organizations.
– How is this developed now?
– Who will pay for people knowing more than they need to know in
normal operations?
Conclusion
• Modularization and commoditization is a characteristic of
NPM and of modern forms of organization.
• It is a challenge for companies, regulators, government
etc to make sure that the SS-concerns are maintained
when critical societal functions are modularized or
commoditized.
• Attention to the “interface-work”, contracts, specifications,
KPI’s etc.
Thank you
Contact: [email protected]