Both risk and uncertainty are neo-liberal concepts, which can be viewed as complementary techniques for governing diverse aspects of life, rather than natural states of things. This new book examines the way these constructs govern the production of wealth through 'uncertain' speculation and 'calculable' investment formulae. The way in which risk and uncertainty govern the minimisation of harms through insurance and through the uncertain practices of 'reasonable foresight' is discussed, and O Malley looks at the way these same techniques were historically forged out of moral and social beliefs about how to govern properly. In addition, the book analyzes is how, during this process, ideas such as 'contract' and distinctions between insurance and gambling were invented to order to 'properly' govern the risky and uncertain future.
The public depends on competent risk assessment from the federal government and the scientific community to grapple with the threat of pollution. When risk reports turn out to be overblownâ€"or when risks are overlookedâ€"public skepticism abounds. This comprehensive and readable book explores how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can improve its risk assessment practices, with a focus on implementation of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. With a wealth of detailed information, pertinent examples, and revealing analysis, the volume explores the "default option" and other basic concepts. It offers two views of EPA operations: The first examines how EPA currently assesses exposure to hazardous air pollutants, evaluates the toxicity of a substance, and characterizes the risk to the public. The second, more holistic, view explores how EPA can improve in several critical areas of risk assessment by focusing on cross-cutting themes and incorporating more scientific judgment. This comprehensive volume will be important to the EPA and other agencies, risk managers, environmental advocates, scientists, faculty, students, and concerned individuals.
Primer on Risk Analysis: Decision Making Under Uncertainty, Second Edition lays out the tasks of risk analysis in a straightforward, conceptual manner, tackling the question, "What is risk analysis?" Distilling the common principles of many risk dialects into serviceable definitions, it provides a foundation for the practice of risk management and decision making under uncertainty for professionals from all disciplines. New in this edition is an expanded risk management emphasis that includes an overview chapter on enterprise risk management and a chapter on decision making under uncertainty designed to help decision makers use the results of risk analysis in practical ways to improve decisions and their outcomes. This book will empower you to enter the world of risk management in your own domain of expertise by providing you with practical, insightful, useful and adaptable knowledge of risk analysis science including risk management, risk assessment, and risk communication. Features: Answers the fundamental question, "What is Risk Analysis?" Presents the tasks of risk management, risk assessment, and risk communication in a straightforward, conceptual manner Responds to the continuing evolution of risk science and addresses the language of risk as it continues to evolve Expands the risk management emphasis with a new chapter to serve private industry and a growing public sector interest in the growing practice of enterprise risk management Includes a new chapter on decision making under uncertainty provides practical guidance and ideas for using risk science to improve decisions and their outcomes Features an expanded set of examples of the risk process that demonstrate the growing applications of risk analysis This book is suitable for executives, professionals and students who seek a fundamental understanding of risk management, risk assessment, and risk communication. A more detailed examination of this topic, suitable for practitioners from any discipline as well as students and professionals who aspire to become experts in the practice of risk analysis science, is found in Principles of Risk Analysis: Decision Making Under Uncertainty, Second Edition, ISBN: 978-1-138-47820-6.
A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.
In every decision context there are things we know and things we do not know. Risk analysis uses science and the best available evidence to assess what we know—and it is intentional in the way it addresses the importance of the things we don’t know. Principles of Risk Analysis: Decision Making Under Uncertainty lays out the tasks of risk analysis in a straightforward, conceptual manner that is consistent with the risk models of all communities of practice. It answers the questions "what is risk analysis?" and "how do I do this?" Distilling the common principles of the many risk tribes and dialects into serviceable definitions and narratives, the book provides a foundation for the practice of risk analysis and decision making under uncertainty for professionals from all walks of life. In the first part of the book, readers learn the language, models, and concepts of risk analysis and its three component tasks—risk management, assessment, and communication. The second part of the book supplies the tools, techniques, and methodologies to help readers apply the principles. From problem identification and brainstorming to model building and choosing a probability distribution, the author walks readers through the how-to of risk assessment. Addressing the critical task of risk communication, he explains how to present the results of assessments and how to develop effective messages. The book’s simple and straightforward style—based on the author’s decades of experience as a risk analyst, trainer, and educator—strips away the mysterious aura that often accompanies risk analysis. It describes the principles in a manner that empowers readers to begin the practice of risk analysis, to better understand and use the models and practice of their individual fields, and to gain access to the rich and sophisticated professional literature on risk analysis. Additional exercises as well as a free student version of the Palisade Corporation DecisionTools® Suite software and files used in the preparation of this book are available for download.
America at Risk gathers original essays by a distinguished and bipartisan group of writers and intellectuals to address a question that matters to Americans of every political persuasion: what are some of the greatest dangers facing America today? The answers, which range from dwindling political participation to rising poverty, and religion to empire, add up to a valuable and timely portrait of a particular moment in the history of American ideas. While the opinions are many, there is a central theme in the book: the corrosion of the liberal constitutional order that has long guided the country at home and abroad. The authors write about the demonstrably important dangers the United States faces while also breaking the usual academic boundaries: there are chapters on the family, religious polarization, immigration, and the economy, as well as on governmental and partisan issues. America at Risk is required reading for all Americans alarmed about the future of their country. Contributors Traci Burch James W. Ceaser Robert Faulkner Niall Ferguson William A. Galston Hugh Heclo Pierre Manent Harvey C. Mansfield Peter Rodriguez Kay Lehman Schlozman Susan Shell Peter Skerry James Q. Wilson Alan Wolfe Robert Faulkner is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. Susan Shell is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. "America at Risk goes well beyond the usual diagnoses of issues debated in public life like immigration, war, and debt, to consider the Republic’s founding principles, and the ways in which they have been displaced by newer thoughts and habits in contemporary America. A critical book for understanding our present condition." —Francis Fukuyama, Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies "In this penetrating book, the nation’s finest social and political thinkers from across the spectrum take a careful and no-holds-barred look at the dangers facing the American political system. The conclusions are more unsettling than reassuring---but that is because they are honest and real." —Norm Ornstein, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute "In the midst of overwrought pundits, irate soccer moms, and outraged bloggers, it is difficult to distinguish genuine dangers from false alarms and special pleading. This book enables us to do so, in a way that helps us to actually think about, not just feel anxious about, threats to those features of American society that are worth cherishing. The authors range in ideology and expertise, but they are uniformly judicious, incisive, and informative. This is a fascinating book about issues that the political system usually ignores or exaggerates." —Jennifer L. Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Risk Governance is a tour de force. Every risk manager, every risk analyst, every risk researcher must read this book - it is the demarcation point for all further advances in risk policy and risk research. Renn provides authoritative guidance on how to manage risks based on a definitive synthesis of the research literature. The skill with which he builds practical recommendations from solid science is unprecedented. Thomas Dietz, Director, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, USA A masterpiece of new knowledge and wisdom with illustrative examples of tested applications to realworld cases. The book is recommendable also to interested students in different disciplines as a timely textbook on 'risk beyond risk'. Norio Okada, Full Professor and Director at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan There are classic environmental works such as The Tragedy of the Commons by Hardin, Risk Society by Beck, The Theory of Communicative Action by Habermas, and the seminal volumes by Ostrom on governing the commons. Renns book fits right into this series of important milestones of environmental studies. Jochen Jaeger, Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada Risk Governance provides a valuable survey of the whole field of risk and demonstrates how scientific, economic, political and civil society actors can participate in inclusive risk governance. Jobst Conrad, Senior Scientist, Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany Renn offers a remarkably fair-minded and systematic approach to bringing together the diverse fields that have something to say about 'risk'. Risk Governance moves us along the path from the noisy, formative stage of thinking about risk to one with a stronger empirical, theoretical, and analytical foundation. Baruch Fischhoff, PhD, Howard Heinz University Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA 'I cannot describe how impressed I am at the breadth and coherence of Renn's career's work! Written with remarkable clarity and minimal technical jargon... [this] should be required reading in risk courses!' John Graham, former director of the Harvard Risk Center and former deputy director of the Office of Budget and Management of the Unites States Administration This book, for the first time, brings together and updates the groundbreaking work of renowned risk theorist and researcher Ortwin Renn, integrating the major disciplinary concepts of risk in the social, engineering and natural sciences. The book opens with the context of risk handling before flowing through the core topics of assessment, evaluation, perception, management and communication, culminating in a look at the transition from risk management to risk governance and a glimpse at a new understanding of risk in (post)modern societies.
Risk as we now know it is a wholly new phenomenon, the by-product of our ever more complex and powerful technologies. In business, policy making, and in everyday life, it demands a new way of looking at technological and environmental uncertainty. In this definitive volume, four of the world's leading risk researchers present a fundamental critique of the prevailing approaches to understanding and managing risk - the 'rational actor paradigm'. They show how risk studies must incorporate the competing interests, values, and rationalities of those involved and find a balance of trust and acceptable risk. Their work points to a comprehensive and significant new theory of risk and uncertainty and of the decision making process they require. The implications for social, political, and environmental theory and practice are enormous. Winner of the 2000-2002 Outstanding Publication Award of the Section on Environment and Technology of the American Sociological Association
The report describes the development of a new risk management culture within professions, companies and governments. The obsession with managing risk is creating organisations which are not so much risk averse as ‘responsibility averse’. In medicine, doctors are practising ‘defensive medicine’ where opinions are heavily qualified with caveats and patients left to make big decisions. The report also refers to growing evidence that since Enron’s failure, major accountancy firms are declining to work with ‘high risk’ clients - the very ones that should be thoroughly audited. “When disclaimer paragraphs are longer than the professional opinions they follow, we know something has gone wrong,” says author Professor Michael Power, a director of the ESRC Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the London School of Economics. “In the interests of transparency, small print should be made large and ruled out as a secondary risk management ploy. “The trends in professions such as medicine and auditing signal a withdrawal of individual judgement from the public. Minimal records are kept, staff are cautioned about the use of email, and normal correspondence is littered with disclaimers. The risk management of everything implies a society of ‘small print’.” Power sees the rise of the ‘risk management of everything’ as a related trend to the audit culture, which included the government’s now widely criticised love of targets as a policy tool. The Audit Explosion, Power’s previous Demos pamphlet, predicted that the overuse of audit leads to a focus on measurable outputs rather than real outcomes. “The most influential dimension of the audit explosion is the process by which [organisations] are made auditable and structured to conform to the need to be monitored,” Power wrote in 1994. Power’s new book argues that risk management is the ‘new audit’ and is having a similar distorting effect on the performance of professionals, companies and government.
