Contributions to Risk Management in the Public Sector
Doctoral thesis
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2008Metadata
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- PhD theses (SV-IH) [15]
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Contributions to Risk Management in the Public Sector by Siri Wiig, Stavanger : University of Stavanger, 2008 (PhD thesis UiS, no. 48)Abstract
Accidents and threats have always been present in society, but the increasing
complexity and interconnectedness within society, including the public sector,
contribute to the emergence of new types of risk and more complex
causalities. The ability to understand the emergence of risk, and to manage
and control risk is a prerequisite for individuals, organizations, and society to
survive and operate safely. Over the past years the role of the state, as a
regulator and risk manager, has increased. The management and control of
risk within the state takes place at many system levels, ranging from policy
level to street level bureaucrats by means of laws, rules, and instructions.
Each level can influence the others in an integrated and tightly coupled
control system. These levels constitute subsystems within the state and offer
different organizational interfaces or points of contacts between the
organizational subsystem and its members. Managing risk and preventing
accidents in the public sector therefore depend on activities and interfaces
among actors at different system levels.
This thesis draws attention to multilevel risk management processes in two
public sectors: public healthcare and municipalities (local government). The
risk management processes covered are those ensuring patient safety in the
specialized healthcare sector and municipal emergency management in the
municipal sector. The thesis explores and analyzes how the society establishes
regimes to regulate and manage risk within the public sector, by applying the
socio-technical system perspective as a framework. This approach allows the
shifting of levels of analysis within the socio-technical system involved in
public risk management and gives rise to issues like regulatory regimes; tools
and strategies applied in controlling and managing risk; understanding the
emergence of and adaptation to, risks; information flow and learning
processes among system levels; and characteristics of organizational
interfaces among different agencies and institutions of national, regional, and
local character of importance for public risk management processes.
The main focus of the thesis is the organizational interfaces involved in risk
management processes in the public sector. The overall research problem is:
How can organizational interfaces across system levels explain risk
management processes in the public sector? Several theoretical contributions
in risk, regulation, and organizational studies are applied to explore and
interpret these organizational interfaces. A qualitative research strategy was
chosen to provide insight into organizational matters, risk management
processes, and discourses within different risk regulation regimes. In four research articles, the thesis documents that organizational interfaces
across system levels can explain risk management processes in the public
sector. Two articles describe organizational interfaces across the entire sociotechnical
system; how risk amplification and attenuation and learning function
in the interfaces; and how regulatory enforcement influences risk management
processes. Two articles investigate how the organizational interface between
regulators and regulatees affects public risk management; how different
enforcement strategies promote or counteract learning processes; and how a
system or an individual focus in enforcement activities makes different
contributions to risk management processes.[...]