On risks and acceptability

Safety Culture and Risk Management in Organizations

The concept of safety culture arose in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. It is argued that safety culture represents a new way of conceptualizing processes of risk handling and management in organizational and other contexts. Safety culture provides a global characterization of some of the common behavioral preconditions to disasters and accidents in high-risk sociotechnical systems, and might also prove to be a heuristic tool to aid risk management strategies to complement current risk assessment practice. Culture is conceptualized in the current article as primarily an ideational system of meanings, and safety culture as one concerned with the norms, beliefs, roles, and practices for handling hazards and risk. Possible elements of a "good" safety culture are elaborated under three headings: norms and rules for dealing with risk, safety attitudes, and reflexivity on safety practice.

Use of strategic environmental assessment in the site selection process for a radioactive waste disposal facility in Slovenia

The benefits of strategic environmental considerations in the process of siting a repository for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste (LILW) are presented. The benefits have been explored by analyzing differences between the two site selection processes. One is a so-called official site selection process, which is implemented by the Agency for radwaste management (ARAO); the other is an optimization process suggested by experts working in the area of environmental impact assessment (EIA) and land-use (spatial) planning. The criteria on which the comparison of the results of the two site selection processes has been based are spatial organization, environmental impact, safety in terms of potential exposure of the population to radioactivity released from the repository, and feasibility of the repository from the technical, financial/economic and social point of view (the latter relates to consent by the local community for siting the repository). The site selection processes have been compared with the support of the decision expert system named DEX. The results of the comparison indicate that the sites selected by ARAO meet fewer suitability criteria than those identified by applying strategic environmental considerations in the framework of the optimization process. This result stands when taking into account spatial, environmental, safety and technical feasibility points of view. Acceptability of a site by a local community could not have been tested, since the formal site selection process has not yet been concluded; this remains as an uncertain and open point of the comparison.

Risk, theory, social and medical models: a critical analysis of the concept of risk in maternity care

BACKGROUND

there is an on-going debate about perceptions of risk and risk management in maternity care.

OBJECTIVES

to provide a critical analysis of the risk concept, its development in modern society in general and UK maternity services in particular. Through the associated theory, we explore the origins of the current preoccupation with risk. Using Pickstone's historical phases of modern health care, the paper explores the way maternity services changed from a social to a medical model over the twentieth century and suggests that the risk agenda was part of this process.

KEY CONCLUSIONS

current UK maternity services policy which promotes normality contends that effective risk management screens women suitable for birth in community maternity units (CMUs) or home birth: however, although current policy advocates a return to this more social model, policy implementation is slow in practice.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

the slow implementation of current maternity policy in is linked to perceptions of risk. We content that intellectual and social capital remains within the medical model.

Science and precaution in the appraisal of electricity supply options

The technological risks associated with electricity generating options are a crucial consideration in the governance of energy strategies. Conversely, many central issues in the broader social debate over the governance of environmental risk (such as acid gas emissions, radioactive waste management, nuclear safety and global climate change) relate very strongly to technology choice in the electricity supply sector. The particularities of this field, therefore, offer a topical and pertinent case with which to explore the relationship between science and precaution in the governance of technological risk. By reference to the electricity sector, the present paper examines the contrasts between 'risk-based' and 'precautionary' approaches to the governance of risk, paying particular attention to the problems of intractable uncertainties and divergent values. A number of theoretical and methodological issues in conventional risk-assessment and cost-benefit analysis are examined and their practical implications for appraisal explored. Attention then turns to the form that might be taken by approaches to the governance of energy risks that are at the same time scientifically well-founded and precautionary. Conclusions are drawn for decision and policy making in this area.