This book is about large technical systems (LTSs), the capital-intensive and often complex
socio-technical organizations that have been deployed to provide for the crucial needs of
modern industrial societies. The archetypes of LTSs are the transportation, telecommunications,
energy supply and urban utility networks that have been developed from the second half of
the nineteenth century. Because they are complex, these systems have traditionally fostered
innovations in industrial organization and management. Because they are essential to the
functioning of modern territories and economies, and because they are traditionally organized
as monopolies they were always placed under close public surveillance. More specifically, the
book is about the governance of LTSs – at the level of individual firms (management), of
economic sectors (industrial organization and public regulation) and of the broader interactions
between these systems and ‘society at large’.