Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations and acronyms
- 1 Organizational encounters with risk: an introduction
- 2 Organizational rituals of risk and error
- 3 ‘Ways of seeing’: understandings of risk in organizational settings
- 4 Risk and rules: the ‘legalization’ of medicine
- 5 Organizational responses to risk: the rise of the chief risk officer
- 6 Incentives, risk and accountability in organizations
- 7 Mathematizing risk: models, arbitrage and crises
- 8 Interdependencies within an organization
- 9 Restoring reason: causal narratives and political culture
- Bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
3 - ‘Ways of seeing’: understandings of risk in organizational settings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations and acronyms
- 1 Organizational encounters with risk: an introduction
- 2 Organizational rituals of risk and error
- 3 ‘Ways of seeing’: understandings of risk in organizational settings
- 4 Risk and rules: the ‘legalization’ of medicine
- 5 Organizational responses to risk: the rise of the chief risk officer
- 6 Incentives, risk and accountability in organizations
- 7 Mathematizing risk: models, arbitrage and crises
- 8 Interdependencies within an organization
- 9 Restoring reason: causal narratives and political culture
- Bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
Making sense of organizations is a persisting difficulty in risk management. There is a need to recognize the tensions between seeing organizations holistically and anthro-pomorphically and seeing them as a constellation of different groups and individuals. Dreams of unity and integration have to be balanced against realities of difference. While some risks will be common to everyone in an organization and understood in broadly similar ways, other risks may be differentially experienced and managed. Organizational scripts and strategies need to be disseminated and accepted by the many different hierarchical, professional and functional groups comprising the organization. Interests may vary and objectives may be differentially understood. This chapter will address these issues through consideration of commonalities and differences in the way risks are understood in organizational settings. It will draw upon case studies, with particular reference to the management of health and safety risks in a large national company in Britain. Attention will be paid to differences in the ways in which occupational health and safety are encountered, made sense of and coped with. We will consider the nature of the variations which exist between different groups within organizations and discuss the possible explanations for these variations. The chapter will also explore the implications of these debates for issues of responsibility and blame.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Organizational Encounters with Risk , pp. 67 - 91Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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