Lomas, Elizabeth; Hicks, Alison; (2023) Risk and risk management through an immersive participatory and literate information lens: Empowering ethical delivery. Presented at: International Conference of Critical Management Studies (ICMS) 2023, Nottingham, UK.

Preview

Text Risk_EL_AH_UCL_June2023.pdf - Other Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

For decades, risk management has been developed as a set of systematic tools enabling seemingly logical navigation through uncertainty. Often these tools have sought to aid the mitigation of negative outcomes, as in the health and safety field or regulatory spaces. However, in their more holistic forms, these tools have also created risk frameworks that allow for the seizing of opportunities in other words ‘to dare’ (risicare in Italian). The route to systems that offer a better controlled state of known outcomes has been mapped through lenses that link into organisational, societal, cultural, professional, communities of practice and personality states (Hillson, 2016). The seeming roadmaps to success have often been deemed to have similarities to those lenses adopted in the change management literature whereby steps are modelled, as in Hiatt’s ADKAR model, or organisational and emotional journeys are traced as in Bridge’s, Kessler’s, Kotter’s and Kubler-Ross’ models respectively (Lomas, 2020). Within each of these models are beliefs in the inherent benefits of change. Within contexts of change, uncertainty and crisis the key component to these mappings has been the construction of shared narratives around the importance of the right risk choices. However, it is to be noted that there are often central powerful actors that lead the discourse and rarely are bottom-up approaches seen. These ideas have been seen most recently in the fight for public opinion and action during shifting pandemic restrictions (Lloyd & Hicks, 2021). Whilst risk management is understood to contain complex networks of factors and events, there has been limited learning from disciplines that have sought to build immersive and participatory frameworks to mediate uncertainty and risk, thereby rethinking how we build risk knowledge. These approaches have the potential to reframe risk management and to ensure better outcomes for a wide range of actors, stakeholders, organisational and ultimately societal benefits. This paper employs an information lens to extend current risk and risk management discourse, considering how concepts of immersion, participation, and risk information literacies open and reframe understandings of ethical decision making. Working from the premise that immersion within both the lived experiences and consequences of choice will empower stakeholders by extending the critical actors, this paper also argues that a sociocultural understanding of risk literacy, including related to the role that information plays in shaping risk perception, understanding and management, will facilitate more useful understandings of how risk is informed. These ideas will be explored through discussion of work that each author has undertaken navigating macro uncertainties from an information and technological perspective during Brexit shifts, COVID-19 lockdowns, and the advancement of AI. The presentation will also introduce work focusing on micro contexts such as the use of risk immersion techniques to facilitate information rights and subject access requests for care experienced people and those experiencing wider legal marginalisation through digital inequalities.

Download activity - last month

Export as XMLJSONCSV

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as CSVJSONXML

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Archive Staff Only

View Item