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Loss of Defensive Capacity in Protective Operations: The Implications of the Überlingen and Linate Disasters

A clear distinction is often drawn between the functions of production and protection in organisations. This implies that they have twin capacities – for production and for protection – that in some respects will be interdependent and in some independent. In the field of operations management productive capacity is a commonly used construct, and there has been some attempt to develop a parallel construct of protective capacity, but this has only been used to refer to capacity that protects productive capacity. It makes no reference to the risk of external harm. This paper presents an attempt to develop the idea of defensive capacity. It uses case studies of two aviation collisions to gain an understanding of what defensive capacity amounts to, and how it can be lost. The results pointed to a way of operationalising defensive capacity that involves preserving its qualitative complexity instead of reducing it to a quantitative variable. They also point to a complex relationship between productive capacity and defensive capacity, which are sometimes complimentary and sometimes opposing. They have certain shared determinants, but certain actions can undermine defensive capacity without there being any observable effect on productive capacity.