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The risk organisation: or how organisations reconcile themselves to failure

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  • Michael Huber
  • Henry Rothstein

Abstract

Over the last decade, the ideas, concepts and tools of risk management have colonised the way that organisations frame potential adverse outcomes associated with their activities. Intended as a means of optimising the tolerance, rather than elimination, of adverse organisational outcomes, risk management has been promoted as a means of challenging organisational practice, particularly in the context of heightened accountability pressures that can readily make organisations risk averse. Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to the extent to which risk ideas are able to challenge traditional organisational ways of understanding and responding to adverse outcomes. In this article, therefore, we examine the implementation of risk management practices in two contrasting organisational contexts; the UK Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the English university sector. Our studies suggest that risk management processes can be readily filtered and reinterpreted through a series of ideological, methodological and organisational mechanisms to reflect and reinforce organisational understandings and practices. We build on this analysis to point to what might tentatively be termed 'Risk Organizations', which are distinctive, at least in principle, by the way in which they seek to identify, but also come to terms with, failure. As such, rather than providing a means of organisational challenge, the systematic application of risk management practices tends to act as a conservative force of organisational continuity.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Huber & Henry Rothstein, 2013. "The risk organisation: or how organisations reconcile themselves to failure," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(6), pages 651-675, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:16:y:2013:i:6:p:651-675
    DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2012.761276
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    Cited by:

    1. Kate Roll & Catherine Dolan & Dinah Rajak, 2021. "Remote (Dis)engagement: Shifting Corporate Risk to the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(4), pages 878-901, July.
    2. David Demeritt & Henry Rothstein & Anne-Laure Beaussier & Michael Howard, 2015. "Mobilizing Risk: Explaining Policy Transfer in Food and Occupational Safety Regulation in the UK," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 47(2), pages 373-391, February.
    3. Arturo Vallejos-Romero & Felipe Sáez Ardura & Minerva Cordoves-Sánchez & César Cisternas & Markku Lehtonen & Luz Karime Sánchez Galvis & Àlex Boso, 2024. "Configuring Socio-Environmental Risks in Chile: Institutional Narratives and Complexities in a Risk Society," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-18, June.

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