Ep.99 When is dropping tools the right thing to do for safety?

The reluctance to drop one’s tools when threat intensifies, and the reasons behind not dropping them, is the focus of the paper we are examining in this episode. We are discussing the 1996 paper “Drop Your Tools: An Allegory for Organizational Studies” by Karl Weick.  The paper compares and contrasts two tragic events involving firefighers who perished because they did not drop their tools to run (Mann Gulch, in 1949, and South Canyon in 1994) with ten principles laid out by James Thompson, the first editor of Administrative Science Quarterly.