Semantic narrowing in risk talk: The prevalence of communicative path dependency

Abstract

This study concerns risk talk. Recent studies draw attention to the significance of communication for the development of intelligent (reflexive) as opposed to compliance-focused, secondary forms of risk management, but also show that risk management systems do not necessarily produce reflective forms of risk talk. To develop an understanding of why reflective risk talk is (un)able to unfold, we study, through a Luhmannian lens, the communicative practices via which reflections on product quality problems as risk unfold in the setting of a division of a multinational manufacturing firm. The study shows how a technical product quality issue ended up being reduced to a financial risk calculation. In so doing, the study makes three contributions. First, we complement the prevailing focus on the role of risk tools and experts in the organisational life of risk management with an analysis of the ways communicative practices constitute organisational risk management. Second, by explicating the ways in which risk semantics in use can narrow the organisational understanding of risks, we show how pluralistic understandings of risks are easily lost at the interfaces of cross-functional communication. Third, we offer an explanation as to why risk talk may not engender the intended reflectivity. Rather than attributing this to secondary risk management, we propose that reflective risk talk is sometimes hampered by ‘communicative path dependency’, meaning that some organisations fail to change risk talk because of communicative practices that rather than to develop, delimit and perpetuate the observable and addressable space for talking about risks.