Dilemmas of Political Correctness

Political correctness plays an important role in debates about poverty, work, and desert, and thus in debates about libertarianism. This chapter shows that there are legitimate reasons to uphold norms against impugning the public status of historically victimized communities, which is central to political correctness. However, upholding such norms also incurs costs, meaning that political correctness often confronts us with dilemmas. These costs are not merely expressive but crucially involve a form of collective irrationality. This manifests itself in Orwellian discourse in how we use terms like “diversity,” in the analysis of causal structures like the attribution of airline accidents that we are reluctant to associate with stereotypes, and in backfire, as when Europeans are reluctant to discuss problems with the project of a currency union.

Flight Crew Errors in Challenging and Stressful Situations

Emergencies and other threatening situations challenge the cognitive capabilities of even the most skilled performers. While the effects of acute stress on cognition and performance have been examined in diverse laboratory studies, few studies have focused on skilled performers. We analyzed 12 airline accidents to determine the types of errors arising in situations that are highly challenging and probably stressful. We identified 212 flight crew errors from accident investigation reports; these errors were grouped into eight higher-level error categories. Cognitive factors contributing to vulnerability to these errors were identified and related to theoretical models of stress. Finally, we suggest specific ways to guard against stress-related errors by enhancing training, operating procedures, and cockpit interfaces.

Organizational Learning: An Assessment of its Impact on Crisis Management in the United Arab Emirates

The perception associated with organizational learning has been established a long time, however merely in a decade, the notion is extremely acknowledged subject in management studies. The essential part of this research contain the ideas of organizational flexibility structures, assessment of orientation, predisposition to experiment, and enthusiasm to review the environment ideas to understand individual capabilities for knowledge and learning in organization. Empirical evidence publicized that airline industry continues to be the topic of numerous crisis management issues which acquired disastrous effect from the perilousness. Further, it is important to keep in mind that crises can arise as significant factors of change, knowledge, and learning opportunities. The article investigates to evaluate the influence regarding organizational learning toward crisis management in airline industry based on qualitative analysis with airline managers and through supplementary information. The outcomes recommend that airlines should have in-depth and defined techniques for understanding the crises and despite the fact that crisis events and conventional airline accidents remain rare, the requirements for knowledge and learning preparation has vehemently become imperative. It is actually proposing that airlines should apply double-loop learning for its instrumental and policy issues to make sure they will end up more vigilant to signals as well as aggressive while obtaining information for the progress of exigency mechanism.

CSR disclosure in response to major airline accidents: a legitimacy-based exploration

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature investigating disclosure reactions to legitimacy threats by analyzing the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure reactions to catastrophic accidents suffered by major airlines. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use content analysis to examine changes in annual report disclosure in response to four separate airline disasters. The authors adopt two classification schemes and two measurement approaches to explore these changes. Findings – The authors find that for three events the organizations appear to have responded with considerable increases in CSR disclosure that are consistent with attempts of legitimation. For one of the events examined, the authors find no disclosure response and suggest that this could be due to the company’s unwillingness to accept responsibility. Research limitations/implications – The study’s focus on major airlines that have suffered an accident with available annual reports in English meant that other companies had to be excluded from the analysis. Practical implications – The findings demonstrate the use of the annual report as a legitimation tool and further highlight the need for greater transparency and comparability across publications. Originality/value – The paper adds to the scarce literature examining corporate disclosure reactions following threats to their social legitimacy.