Ethics and Risk Management

A volume in Ethics in PracticeSeries Editors Robert A. Giacalone University of Denverand Carole L. Jurkiewicz Hofstra UniversityThe underlying rationale for this book is to present research that a) highlights the explosively political anddeeply divisive issues involved in managing risk and b) address the empirical deficit and theoreticalchallenges related to managing societal risk ethically. Extant risk management research borrows heavilyfrom engineering systems theory and business management and is primarily focused on probabilitiesmodeling and abstractions of the value of mitigative action. This research engenders a false sense ofobjectivity and it de-politicizes fundamental political and democratic questions about the allocation ofsociety's scarce resources and about the balance of responsibilities between governing institutions andindividuals with regard to risk. The quantitative and hard-science focus on risk also keeps a discussion ofthe consequences of the distribution of risk resources and responsibilities for real people out of the limelight. The contributors to this book are experts in a wide range of academic fields and in this book they takeon the challenge of examining their core research with a specific ethics perspective. They explore the ethicsof risk management using theory cases and data from a range of policy areas countries and philosophical traditions.This book should be of interest to scholars and practitioners working in fields that deal either implicitly or explicitly with risk. This would include butis not limited to scholars and students of public management public sector ethics public policy risk regulation and risk management. The book dealsdirectly with core problems of management in the public sector value-conflicts multiple principals and stakeholders as well as information analysisand the application of sound and valid decision-making processes. The book can be adopted as a core text for graduate courses in public managementpublic policy public administration ethics and comparative politics. It would also work well as an applied theory text in comparative politics; ethicscentered courses in political science as well as more narrowly focused courses on risk crisis and disaster management.For the practitioner audience this book pin-points the ethical stakes the analytical and managerial challenges and the necessary tools to meet themany risks that societies face. This book Ethics and Risk Management provides a unique take on the realities of cost-benefit analysis efforts tocontrol and regulate risk and risky behavior as well as the decidedly bounded rationality with whichwe as decision-makers and citizens perceive and take risks. The work of identifying understandingprioritizing and designing effective tools to mitigate and manage risk is an inherently analytical andstrategic process best suited to take place before and between crises. Successful risk analysis andmanagement reduces the general occurrence of crises while the ethical analysis and management ofrisk serves to reduce the likelihood of subsequent socio-political turmoil should a crisis occur. Thusthe investment that any practitioner makes in risk management has the potential to yield both socialand political benefits if the analysis and work is done with an eye toward ethics and stakeholderanalysis.