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Spotlighted institutions circle the wagons
Blockers everywhere
Boeing initially blamed the 737 MAX crashes on pilots who were not trained well enough, and the FAA refused document requests from a Senate panel. At Fukushima, TEPCO and its regulator, NISA, blocked and got in the way. The Army Corps of Engineers did the same after Katrina.
An institutional instinct
These organizations are not necessarily evil. They have a sixth sense for how to respond when they are put on the spot, and the instinct is institutional.
Captured regulators
The regulators complicate it. Many people came to think Boeing and the FAA were working as one, and Senator Ted Cruz, with the head of the FAA in front of the Senate, accused him of being captured and asked whether he knew he did not work for Boeing. At Fukushima, the failure was partly regulatory capture too, because the regulator and the company had almost become friends.
Why do regulators drift toward industry?
Economist Mancur Olson argued in The Logic of Collective Action, published in 1965, that small groups with a large stake organize more easily than large groups whose members each have a small stake. A company facing a rule has every reason to lobby, hire experts, and show up to every hearing. The public that benefits from the rule is spread thin, and no single member has much reason to attend. Regulators therefore tend to hear far more from the industry than from anyone else.
Why do organizations get defensive under scrutiny?
Barry Staw, Lance Sandelands, and Jane Dutton described a threat-rigidity effect in a 1981 paper. Under threat, groups tend to narrow the information they consider, centralize decisions, and fall back on familiar routines. The paper appeared in Administrative Science Quarterly.
Why do we say circle the wagons?
The phrase comes from the image of settlers' wagon trains on the American frontier forming a ring against attack. Historians say wagon trains rarely did this in practice. When they did form a circle, it was more often to pen in their livestock for the night. The defensive image spread mainly through Western films and novels.
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