The Tennessee Valley Authority and Nuclear Power An Examination of Organizational Failure

Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Brain, David

Keywords

Tennessee Valley Authority, Nuclear Power, Organizational Theory

Area of Concentration

Sociology

Abstract

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a government organization formed in 1933 with the passing of the TVA act as part of the New Deal. My project focused on TVA�s production of electricity and the failure of the nuclear power program in 1985. Given past success I sought to explain how and why the nuclear power program failed. To do so, I utilized primary documents, acquired from the Atlanta National Archives that consisted of correspondence between the Freeman Board, congress, division heads within TVA, constituents, and industry actors. Theoretical frameworks utilized in my analysis included Weberian, Neo-Weberian, and Neo-Institutionalist organizational theory, along with Actor-Network Theory for interpreting primary documents and understanding relevant factors of program failure. Additionally, I juxtaposed the TVA in two different time periods, the New Deal and the 1970s-1980s era of failure. The importance of the two historical contexts is that one, the New Deal, provided a conducive environment for organizational success, while the 1970s and 1980s proved a far more difficult environment to adjust to. All in all, the documents revealed a lively actor network that unraveled because of technological instability, entrenched organizational practices, a new environment of organizational embeddedness, parameter shifts to said environment, the persistence of organizational myth, and the factor of group affiliation amongst actors. Such an analysis takes us far beyond the former and narrower understanding that the board of directors was primarily to blame for the nuclear program failure by situating the failure within different institutional environments along with the explication of an actor network that includes technology.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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