The practice of risk governance: lessons from the field

Abstract

In contradistinction to generic and formal risk governance models such as the IRGC framework, this paper advocates the relevance of a contextual and practice-based approach to organizational risk governance. Three cases illustrate the socially situated dynamics of risk governance practice: public transportation management, river management, and railway planning. Risk governance is shown to derive from how actors, in their daily activities, mediate multi-level and regulatory institutional constraints, and solve actual problems through routines, trust, mutual understanding and not least, shared commitment to the societal role of infrastructure. Our findings underscore that risk governance takes place in contexts that are historically, spatially and institutionally situated. We therefore suggest that one needs to pay attention to the characteristics of this contextuality to understand the social dynamics of governance.