This pioneering work offers a step by step account of how management
systems can be built that can prevent hitherto "unpreventable"
disasters. Recent disasters such as the 2004 tsunami continue to
demonstrate Professor Allinson's thesis that valuing human lives is the
core of ethical management. His unique comparison of the ideas of the
power of Fate and High Technology, his penetrating analysis of the very
concept of "accident", demonstrate how such concepts rule our lives. A
wide-ranging investigation of court cases and government documents from
the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, and from places as
diverse as the USA, UK and New Zealand provide ample supporting evidence
for this thesis.