Organizational Encounters with Risk

A critical analysis of the ways in which organisations and their participants 'encounter' risk.

Bridget Hutter (Edited by), Michael Power (Edited by)

9780521609289, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 1 December 2005

284 pages
22.4 x 15 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'Bridget Hutter and Michael Power have put together an all-star cast that both advances knowledge and sets an ambitious research agenda.' James Short, Department of Sociology, Washington State University

Organizational encounters with risk range from errors and anomalies to outright disasters. In a world of increasing interdependence and technological sophistication, the problem of understanding and managing such risks has grown ever more complex. Organizations and their participants must often reform and reorganise themselves in response to major events and crises, dealing with the paradox of managing the potentially unmanageable. Organizational responses are influenced by many factors, such as the representational capacity of information systems and concerns with legal liability. In this collection, leading experts on risk management from a variety of disciplines address these complex features of organizational encounters with risk. They raise critical questions about how risk can be understood and conceived by organizations, and whether it can be 'managed' in any realistic sense at all. This book is an important reminder that the organisational management of risk involves much more than the cool application of statistical method.

Acknowledgements
1. Organizational encounters with risk: an introduction Bridget Hutter and Michael Power
2. Organizational rituals of risk and error Diane Vaughan
3. 'Ways of seeing': understandings of risk in organisational settings Bridget Hutter
4. Risk and rules: the 'legalization' of medicine Carol A. Heimer, Juleigh Coleman Petty and Rebecca J. Culyba
5. Organizational responses to risk: the rise of the Chief Risk Officer Michael Power
6. Incentives, risk and accountability in organizations Timothy Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak
7. Mathematizing risk: models, arbitrage and crises Donald MacKenzie
8. Interdependencies within an organization Howard Kunreuther and Geoffrey Heal
9. Restoring reason: causal narratives and political culture Sheila Jasanoff
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Organizational theory & behaviour [KJU], Management decision making [KJMD], Business & management [KJ], Economics [KC], Sociology & anthropology [JH]