The 'Art' of Framing Risk: The Attentional Process of Risk Framing in Organizations

Abstract

Managing uncertainty and risk has always been an inherent component of organizations’ life. However, facing the growing complexity and unpredictability of our society, firms struggle with their very ability of developing a clear, accurate and intelligible representation of risks. How and why an organization comes to consider something as a risk is thus an essential question, which is often hidden behind the deceptive appearance of risk as an objective calculation. In this paper, we argue that risk rather refers to a subjective and normative frame of thinking and acting toward uncertainty, which both reflects and shapes allocation of organizational attention. We intend to explore the process of “risk framing”, by investigating the attentional patterns that underpin the construction and mobilization of risk frames in daily decisions and activities. Through a qualitative inductive study of 36 processes, we reveal that risk framing occurs through four distinct modes – capture, revelation, incorporation and assimilation –, depending on the role of risk in the process (as an object or a structure of attention), and on the allocation of attention (emergent or deliberate).