Coping with chaos at Fukushima Daiichi: Bricolage in and through a space

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When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was hit with unexpected force by an earthquake and a tsunami, its safety protocol did not include instructions for what to do in case of a complete loss of power. Plant personnel were forced to practice bricolage, making do with what they had, to come up with their own solutions. Existing literature on bricolage activities has until now largely focused on organizational perspective. This article uses the case of the catastrophe at Fukushima to shed light on the role played by managers and workers when doing bricolage according to their hierarchical position as it is distributed within a space. This article claims that bricolage is made possible in and through space through movement, distance and boundaries; by creating rules for choosing not to escape, expanding the bricolage repertoire's within a space, defining objectives which are simultaneously clear and gaseous, pushing back the boundaries of a repertoire to increase the possible surface area available for bricolage, and using hierarchical power to expand resources. Finally, our article suggests that paying closer attention to the mechanisms actors use to appropriate and create spaces might provide a new framework for analyzing crises and their management, as well as helping to identify ways to promote bricolage practices in crisis situations.