The Death-Based Model of Organizational Learning: Accident, Pandemic, and Workplace Change in New York Public Transit
The Death-Based Model of Organizational Learning: Accident, Pandemic, and Workplace Change in New York Public Transit
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基于死亡的组织学习模型：纽约公共交通的事故、流行病和工作场所变化
DOI：
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发表时间：
2022
影响因子：
3.2
通讯作者：
Noah McClain
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Noah McClain
2020年春季，纽约市的公共交通工人因COVID-19而丧生的人数之多令人震惊，这可能是因为他们的雇主一直抵制让工人戴口罩，直到宣布全地区封锁前几天。我们可能会把这一死亡人数看作是在前所未有的情况下不确定性的悲惨结果，但雇主（大都会运输管理局，MTA）的立场与其长期以来不愿意吸收或追求表明需要安全改革的信号是一致的-也就是说，直到工人死亡。本文将这种模式称为“基于死亡的组织学习模式”，并从三个角度来分析病毒对运输工人的影响：第一，从工人在工作场所的生存不稳定性的经验来看，这种危险植根于工人容易提出问题但管理层没有解决的危险;第二，通过展示MTA如何在员工死亡后修改规则，至少当死亡不能单独由个人失败解释时;第三，通过探索MTA长期以来对在其物理和机构范围内进行的健康和安全研究的敌意。MTA在应对COVID-19时表现出了这些先前的模式，例如面对一般公共卫生指南的被动态度，对明显的专业知识来源不感兴趣，以调整其应对大流行病的措施，以及鉴于其员工的死亡人数不断增加，最终接受了一个新生的公共卫生角色。
The public transportation workers of New York City lost their lives to COVID-19 at a shocking rate in the spring of 2020, likely abetted by their employer’s resistance to allow workers to wear masks until mere days before a region-wide lockdown was declared. We might see this death toll as a tragic outcome of uncertainty in the face of the unprecedented, yet the stance of the employer (the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA) was consistent with its longstanding reluctance to assimilate or pursue signals that suggest need for safety reforms — that is, until a worker dies. This article terms this pattern a “death-based model of organizational learning,” and situates the virus’ toll on transport workers from three angles: first, from workers’ experience of existential precarity in their workplaces, rooted in dangers workers readily problematize but which are not addressed by management; second, by showing how the MTA may modify rules following an employee fatality, at least when that death cannot be explained by individual failures alone; and third, by exploring the MTA’s longstanding hostility to health and safety research conducted in its physical and institutional bounds. These prior patterns articulated in the MTA’s response to COVID-19, such as in passivity in the face of general public health guidelines, disinterest in obvious founts of expertise to tailor its response to the pandemic, and in the eventual acceptance of a nascent public health role in light of the mounting death toll of its employees.