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Accountability Sinks

Accountability engineering in institution design

In so far as it is possible to reconstruct the reasoning, it was presumed that the destruction of living creatures would be rare, more used as a threat to encourage people to take care over their paperwork rather than something that would happen to hundreds of significantly larger mammals than the newborn chicks for which the shredder had been designed. The characterisation of the employees’ decision as an ‘assessment mistake’ is revealing; in retrospect, the only safeguard in this system was the nebulous expectation that the people tasked with disposing of the animals might decide to disobey direct instructions if the consequences of following them looked sufficiently grotesque. And if the result of Washer giving a honest report about the incident is that a second ground radar is purchased, that the interfering lights are relocated, or that various less important auxiliary tasks are not performed by the flight controller in charge, the effect on air traffic safety is a much bigger than what could be achieved by firing Wascher.

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