Why Doesn't the (Watch) Dog Bark? Logics of Risk Regulation and Management in the italian Railway Sector

Scholars from different disciplines have highlighted an increased focus on the avoidance of possible negative outcomes as a by-product of different areas of human activity by our (Western) societies. Risk management and regulation have turned out to be a crucial public and political issue. In addition, the number of public agencies dedicated to risk management and regulation has grown both at the national as well as at the supra-national levels. Consequently, a growing number of human activities have fostered complex networks of organizations – regulators and regulated organizations interacting at different levels of government – dedicated to risk management and regulation. Nevertheless, despite such an increased attention, amount of resources and number of organizations, organizational accidents still happen. A look at recent news reports gives a considerable number of examples such as the derailment and explosion of an oil-transport train in Alabama on 8 November 2013 or the Santiago de Compostela high-speed train derailment which occurred 24 July 2013. The question the study aims to answer arises from this puzzle: why doesn’t the (watch) dog bark? Thus why, despite the presence of regulators in charge of monitoring and regulating human activities in order to avoid, cope with and/or handle the possible negative and unwanted outcomes of such activities, do organizational accidents keep happening? In order to understand the way in which a multi-level regulatory network works, a theoretical-analytical framework is required which allows, on the one hand, different levels of government – national and supra-national – to be kept together leaving room for contradictions and/or overlapping. On the other hand, the need to ensure an in-depth understanding of the processes, interactions and coordination strategies shaped by such organizations as well as of the cultural-cognitive basis of such processes, interactions and coordination strategies, must be considered. The institutional logics theoretical-analytical framework satisfies these requirements. Institutional logics are “conceptual lenses” through which the regulating organizations see, interpret and represent reality. The logic concept bounds a set of cultural-cognitive factors – categories and associated meanings, rationales, legitimate ends – as well as structural-organizational components – processes such as legitimated means to reach legitimated ends and structures – shaping and shaped by the organization’s everyday on-going activities. The institutional logic identification allows us to distinguish which kinds of possible dangerous events are considered by regulators, thus if regulators can see the relevant mechanisms/factors contributing to creating a context prone to the accident’s genesis within the regulated organizations An understanding of the underlying logic requires the in-depth analysis that only a case study research design can assure. The case selection follows the trends identified by previous studies about risk regulation mentioned above. Thus, some of the concepts and ideas developed here could in principle be useful to understand a broad and increasing population of cases: the population of risk regulatory networks. The case of the Italian railway sector has been selected. An analysis of the EU rail transport legislative framework allows the regulating organizations the analysis focus on to be identified: the European Railway Agency (ERA), at the European level of government; the Italian National Safety Authority (NSA); and the Italian National Investigation Body (NIB), at the Italian level of government. The analysis considers: different types of documents produced by the three regulating organizations – around 4,000 pages; 40 interviews conducted with members of such organizations; observation of everyday activities within each organization – for a total of five months. Once we have identified the institutional logics shaping and shaped by the regulators in their everyday activities, and understood the way in which the logics’ interactions affect the network’s functioning, we need to link the functioning regulatory network with the organizational accident genesis. Thus, we propose an analytical comparison between the identified logics and the mechanisms/factors relevant to the organizational accident’s genesis. The analysis points out that: • The regulating organizations located at different levels of government follow different institutional logics: the cost-benefit logic prevalent among the ERA; the standard logic prevalent among the NSA; and the possibility logic prevalent among the NIB. The three logics present different degrees of legitimacy, thus in their interplay one logic tends to prevail over others. Generally, the more legitimated one is the cost-benefit logic, thus the conclusions shaped by this logic’s point of view tend to prevail during interactions and discussions. • The logics have a framing effect that focus regulators’ attention on certain events and, at the same time, filter out other events relevant from an organizational accident genesis point of view. This study indicates how the same organisational processes, methods of reasoning, assumptions and principles shaping and shaped by regulators’ actions and decisions in order to manage the possible side-effects of the regulated area of human activity, tend to divert regulators’ attention from informational input that is potentially relevant in order to intercept an accident before it happens. Thus, it is not just a deviance or functional lacuna of the regulatory activity that can lead to an accident happening without any intervention by regulators, but it is the actual ‘normal’ functioning of the regulators’ activities that can prevent regulators from seeing events that are potentially relevant in intercepting an accident before it happens.