Normalization of deviance is a term used by the American sociologist
Diane Vaughan
Diane Vaughan is an American sociologist and professor at Columbia University. She is known for her work on organizational and management issues, in particular in the case of the space shuttle ''Challenger'' Disaster.
In the understanding of saf ...
to describe the process in which
deviance from correct or proper behavior or rule becomes normalized in a government or corporate culture.
Vaughan defines this as a process where a clearly unsafe practice comes to be considered normal if it does not immediately cause a catastrophe: "a long incubation period
efore a final disasterwith early warning signs that were either misinterpreted, ignored or missed completely".
The original example cited by Vaughan was the events leading to the
Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' disaster in 1986, but the concept has also been applied to
aviation safety
Aviation safety is the study and practice of managing risks in aviation. This includes preventing aviation accidents and incidents through research, educating air travel personnel, passengers and the general public, as well as the design of airc ...
, clinical practice in medicine, and the public's deviance from health measures aimed to stop the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
. Normalization of deviance exhibits itself in train control safety legislation.
Normalization of deviance can exist in conjunction with corporate
omerta where deviation from rules is held up by a code of silence surrounding the deviations or an unspoken agreement on rhetoric within a group of executives.
Lion Air Flight 610
Lion Air Flight 610 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Soekarno–Hatta International Airport, Jakarta to Depati Amir Airport, Pangkal Pinang in Indonesia. On 29 October 2018, the Boeing 737 MAX operating the route crashed into th ...
and
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Ethiopia to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. On 10 March 2019, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft ...
crashed because of normalization of deviance where there was a criticism of corporate
omerta with a "culture of silence."
[Robison, P., Flying Blind, Doubleday, New York, 2021.]
See also
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Shifting baseline
A shifting baseline (also known as a sliding baseline) is a type of change to how a system is measured, usually against previous reference points (baselines), which themselves may represent significant changes from an even earlier state of the syst ...
References
Safety
Deviance (sociology)
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