There are a few components involved in this disaster: 1) The "system" which, in the article, refers to the standard procedures and best practices one should fo

There are a few components involved in this disaster: 1) The "system" which, in the article, refers to the standard procedures and best practices one should follow when monitoring and running an oil well of this type. From what the author said, it appears that if the people at the well had followed these procedures the blowout wouldn't have happened. 2) Human error -- people being careless, rushed, drunk, tired, not understanding procedures, etc. This is the "people aren't immune to screw-ups" factor. It's not clear how much this applies to this particular incident. 3) There's another sort of "system" that 1) and 2) are embedded in, and that is the system of incentives in which people operate. This includes things like your manager pressuring you to "do it anyway", or knowing that your promotion depends on cutting corners and being under budget. I suspect that this is the root of the problem, in this case. One reason these incentives are the way they are is because they often work --- the company saves money (or the individual gets his promotion) and even when things go wrong the cost of the failure may be less than the money saved (though, that likely won't be true in the case of BP). Other reasons may involve not fully understanding the risks, or principal/agent issues.