System Emergence, System Effects: A Formation Story of Air Traffic Control

Diane Vaughan, Columbia University

This paper takes up the issue of historical narratives that trace the emergence, persistence, and change of new forms of social organization. Hirschman and Reed argue that these “formation stories” are not simply descriptive but are fundamentally causal, “providing the historical empirical boundaries for the functioning of forcing-cause accounts” that are more typical of historical sociology (2014: 259-282). Drawing from an historical ethnography of four facilities in the air traffic control system that locates the fieldwork chapters between system history and the present, I give an overview of the emergence of this socio-technical system, its transformation, and system effects on controllers and their work over 12 decades. The inductive analysis showed an incremental process marked by eras indicating variation in developments over time: the dominant actors driving the system - individuals, organizations, or technology – changed; development was uneven, and following Abbott, turning points across the life course were diffuse. Studies in History of Technology became essential. Across all eras were five patterns showing ongoing, overlapping processes that shaped the system, its technologies, and its effects: System Emergence, Institutionalization and Elaboration; Historical Contingency; The Changing Nature of Work; Precedent and Innovation; and Shifting Boundaries in the Sky and on the Ground. The conclusion addresses how this case both conforms to and deviates from the typical event history analysis in historical sociology, the difference and similarities in the patterns found, and how analyzing formation stories as causal accounts can build the analytic and theoretical repertoires of historical sociology, history of technology, and organization theory.

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 Presented in Session 265. Social Origins of Institutions