Organizational Culture and the Performance of Critical Infrastructure: Modeling and Simulation in Socio-Technological Systems

Civil infrastructures are vital elements of a nation's physical well-being and quality of life because modern economies rely on the services these systems provide to move goods, people, and information safely and reliably. The linkage between systems and services is critical because the institutions and people that manage, operate, and maintain them are as important as the physical assets. This paper will examine several catastrophic system failures of the past twenty years from the perspective of the role played by the organization itself in facilitating disaster. It will seek to demonstrate that organizational culture and values, and their effect on individual members of the organization, are critical to safe and reliable systems. It will also suggest that simulations, employing agent-based models and other tools from the social sciences, would be useful in enhancing our understanding of the complex interactions that occur in these socio-technological systems.