Expert work and a blunt tool: Understanding risk assessment in complex organisations

Abstract

Risk management has become a central function in many organisations, particularly those that are involved in complex and hazardous activities such as airlines, hospitals and nuclear power stations. As a discipline, psychology has engaged with a broad range of issues relating to the management of safety and risk in organisations and has often employed qualitative and naturalistic methods to do so. The focus of this work has typically been on ‘front–line’ activities in organisations. The activities of actually assessing and managing risk have received less scrutiny. This paper examines how expert risk managers in airlines understand and use one of the most common tools of risk assessment, and suggests that qualitative methods can reveal considerable gaps between the beliefs and understandings of risk managers and the design of common risk management tools.