Larry Saha Room - Haydon Allen Building, Seminar Room HA 2175

Presenter: Professor Andrew Hopkins

The Global Financial crisis of late 2008 was generated by years of risky behaviour in the finance industry.  These risks had paid off for myriads of decision makers, in the short term, but the long term consequence was financial catastrophe.  Since 2008 a number of ideas have emerged about how to alter the incentive arrangements for finance industry decision makers, in such a way as to make them more concerned about the longer term consequences of their behaviour.  The argument of this paper is that these ideas have direct relevance for the management of catastrophic health, safety and environmental (HSE) risks, and thus for the prevention of disasters such as the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Andrew Hopkins is a professor in the School of Sociology.  He has written numerous books on the sociology of safety, many of which focus on catastrophic risk.  Most relevant to this seminar is his Failure to Learn: The BP Texas City Refinery Disaster, published in 2008, which has sold nearly 8000 copies.  He was consultant to the US Chemical Safety Board which investigated the Texas City accident.  He won the European Process Safety Centrte prize in 2008, the first time it has been awarded outside Europe.

RSVP for light lunch: alden.klovdahl@anu.edu.au