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Combining Risk and Responsibility Perspectives: First Steps

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Abstract

Business activity can be analyzed through a ‘risk awareness’ perspective and a ‘responsibility awareness’ perspective. However, risk and responsibility are actually interdependent. Risk-taking triggers responsibility issues and taking responsibility means risking being asked critical questions. This article suggests some first steps for combining these two perspectives conceptually. After several introductory illustrations showing how risk and responsibility issues are intertwined, the article looks separately each at risk and at responsibility. Then the argument that such perspectives could be usefully combined is elaborated further from a theoretical angle and from a practical angle, by looking at various ethical issues and by presenting paradigmatic examples of balancing or sharing risk and responsibility related to leadership, to ERM and to insurance.

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Notes

  1. Cf. with a focus on such interdependencies Giddens 1999, Kaufmann 1992 and 1995, Leiss and Chociolko 1994.

  2. As original sources see e.g. M. Woodcock, 1979, Team Development Manual, Gower, Aldershot or D. Francis and D. Young, 1979, Improving Work Groups… University Associates, San Diego.

  3. The story continues as follows: After a difficult night, David and Diana decide to accept the offer, and a contract is signed the next day… Although he had hoped to forget the whole incident, David grows increasingly insecure about his relationship with Diana, consumed with a fear that she remains involved with Gage (ibid.). After this prophecy fulfils itself for a while, some 60 or so movie minutes later, Diana returns to David.

  4. One could quote Diana once more, who declares later in the movie, with the wisdom of hindsight: ‘If you ever want something badly, let it go. If it comes back to you, then it's yours forever. If it doesn't, then it was never yours to begin with…’ (ibid.).

  5. The Merriam Webster Dictionary provides the following synonyms of risk:

    ‘… possibility of loss or injury, peril; someone or something that creates or suggests a hazard; the chance of loss or the perils to the subject matter of an insurance contract; also: the degree of probability of such loss; a person or thing that is a specified hazard to an insurer; an insurance hazard from a specified cause or source; the chance that an investment… will lose value…’ (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Risk).

  6. Beck uses as a metaphor the inadequacy of bike brakes for stopping intercontinental jet planes (1993, p. 915). As a newer source in English see, e.g. Beck (2006).

  7. Another and perhaps more fruitful terminological distinction could be between an actor’s or one-decision or micro-level risks, and systemic or macro-level risks, cf., e.g. Renn 2008, pp. 61–66 et passim.

  8. Cf e.g. the work of the Swiss risk dialogue foundation, http://www.risiko-dialog.ch/Overview%20in%20English.

  9. Note for readers with a sense of linguistic subtleties: The German term Verantwortbarkeit refers literally to a possibility or ability for something to be taken responsibility for, and implies an upper limit to which one can or should take responsibility for a risk. This subtlety is not easy to translate into English, even if the idea seems to involve an understanding of responsibility as an ability to respond (no ability, no responses, no responsibility, no Verantwortbarkeit).

  10. Cf also Enderle 2006, referring to W. Schulz’ Philosophie in ver veränderten Welt, Pfullingen 1972.

  11. Cf also the initiative dimension mentioned above; cf for the source Brinkmann 2007, p. 89, summarising points made by Bierhoff in Bayertz’ anthology, 1995.

  12. See in particular what lawyers in different jurisdictions call risk liability, no-fault or strict liability, or in German Gefährdungshaftung, liability for damages occurring as an extension of permitted risk taking and risk exposure, independently of fault (http://home.iprimus.com.au/than/toby/Risk_Liability.pdf, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gef%C3%A4hrdungshaftung, http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/No-fault+liability, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fault_insurance).

  13. See, e.g. as one example among many: http://www.risk-management-basics.com/risk-management-risk-question.shtml or see simply the results of a quick google image search: http://images.google.no/images?hl=en&rlz=1T4GPEA_enNO295NO295&um=1&sa=1&q=risk+management+process&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&start=0 .

  14. For many more visualisations see http://images.google.no/images?um=1&hl=en&rlz=1T4GPEA_enNO295NO295&q=risk+management+model&btnG=Search+Images.

  15. On a very general and abstract level, many risk managment schemes look like the one presented in exhibit #1. Cf most generally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/risk_management or more specifically, e.g. from a consultancy angle, both as one of the most general USPs and promises http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/risk-management/index.jhtml or http://www.dnv.com/focus/risk_management/.

  16. Jones’ (descriptive) points of departure are indicators or ‘components’ of moral intensity: magnitude of consequences, social consensus, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity and concentration of effect, which alone and jointly increase the likelihood of an issue being recognised as a moral issue (see 1991, pp. 374–378, 380–383).

  17. Cf. Rossouw and van Vuuren (2004), with an emphasis of the reputation risk aspect of ethical risks (in fact understood as a threat-opportunity range rather than as negative risk only), see especially their table on p. 203 (using various stakeholders as sources of potentially risky reputation relationships). Cf also as an academic paper Fombrun et al. 2000 and the inspiring Economist-report about ‘reputation as the risk of risks’, http://www.acelimited.com/NR/rdonlyres/2B964DD5-F93E-47C3-BA44-999A0BAEAD40/0/RISK_REPUTATION_REPORT.pdf.

  18. For a presentation see the same website: ‘Risk governance applies the principles of good governance to the identification, assessment, management and communication of risks in a broad sense. It incorporates such criteria as accountability, participation and transparency within the procedures and structures by which risk-related decisions are made and implemented. Risk governance includes the totality of actors, rules, conventions, processes and mechanisms and is concerned with how relevant risk information is collected, analysed and communicated and how management decisions are taken. Global risks are not confined to national borders; they cannot be managed through the actions of a single sector. The governance of global, systemic risks requires cohesion between countries and the inclusion within the process of government, industry, academia and civil society…’ (source: http://www.irgc.org/).

  19. Renn’s Fig. 10.1 in Renn 2008; cf. also, e.g. the same figure in a simplified format as Fig. 2.1, also Fig. 5.4 and 9.1.

  20. Jones’ definition of moral intensity: ‘A construct that captures the extent of issue-related moral imperative in a situation. It is multidimensional, and its component parts are characteristics of the moral issue such as magnitude of consequences, social consensus, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity and concentration of effect…’ (1991, p. 372, present author’s italics).

  21. Cf. also in a more ordinary sentence format: ‘Responsibility is to start with a concept which is expressed in a relational ascription norm by an evaluation of a controlled action expectation’ (ibid.). Cf. also a similar definition of Lenk, quoted in Bayertz 1995, p. 217, similarly Nunner-Winkler (1993) or as a ‘visualized’ checklist Ulrich and Thielemann 1992, p. 18.

  22. Cf, e.g. In its essence, leadership in an organisational role involves (1) establishing a clear vision, (2) sharing (communicating) that vision with others so that they will follow willingly, (3) providing the information, knowledge and methods to realise that vision and (4) coordinating and balancing the conflicting interests of all members or stakeholders. A leader comes to the forefront in case of crisis, and is able to think and act in creative ways in difficult situations. Unlike management, leadership flows from the core of a personality and cannot be taught, although it may be learned and may be enhanced through coaching or mentoring (source: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/leadership.html) or as the ‘process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task’, or as ‘creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership).

  23. Cf. also Sims and Brinkmann (2002, 2003) who use Schein’s focus on leadership as a critical component of the organisation’s culture, by in fact creating, maintaining or changing it, including its ethicalness, in accordance with for example Ch. I. Barnard’s executive role description as the creator of ‘morals for others’ (1938, quoted by Sims and Brinkmann 2002). More specifically, Schein looks at various mechanisms or ingredients of leadership styles which do or which can influence an organisation’s ethical climate, such as attention focus, reaction to crises and role modeling (cf. ibid.).

  24. There exists also a textbook by C.L. Brungardt 1999, Risk leadershipthe courage to confront & challenge, Rocky Mountain Press, Longmont, Co.

  25. Max Weber’s classical essay Politik als Beruf (1919, English translation 1994) can be read in various ways: as a criticism of voluntarism, as a criticism of emphasising good or evil intentions at the expense of good or evil consequences, as a practical elaboration of consequentialism and as a kind of virtue ethics, elaborating positive personal properties of good decision-makers in political (and similar) contexts.

  26. Cf at least a few quotations: ‘The question facing such a person … is which qualities will enable him to do justice to this power… and thus to the responsibility it imposes on him… Three qualities are pre-eminently decisive for a politician: passion, a sense of responsibility, judgement (Weber clarifies these properties also by their contrary: vanity, power focus, lack of distance,’ ibid.).

  27. Cf. ibid. ‘… Ethically oriented activity can follow two fundamentally different, irreconcilably opposed maxims. It can follow the ‘ethic of principled conviction’ (Gesinnungsethik) or the ‘ethic of responsibility’ (Verantwortungsethik, JB’s add.). It is not that the ethic of conviction is identical with irresponsibility, nor that the ethic of responsibility means the absence of principled conviction… But there is a profound opposition between acting by the maxim of the ethic of conviction … and acting by the maxim of the ethic of responsibility, which means that one must answer for the (foreseeable) consequences of one’s actions…’ (pp. 359–360).

  28. Cf.: ‘A man who subscribes to the ethic of responsibility… will make allowances for… everyday shortcomings in people… He does not feel that he can shuffle off the consequences of his own actions, as far as he could foresee them, and place the burden on the shoulders of others. He will say, ‘These consequences are to attributed to my actions’… No ethics in the world can get around the fact that the achievement of ‘good’ ends is in many cases tied to the necessity of employing morally suspect or at least morally dangerous means, and that one must reckon with the possibility or even likelihood of evil side-effects.’ (p. 360).

  29. For sceptical remarks cf Luhmann 1993a and b, with the advice that one should make sure that a normative focus on risk issues does not further prejudice instead of good judgment, and also make sure that such a focus does not replace humbleness and good questions with premature answers.

  30. Including ethics of/and risk as alternative labels and keywords. Cf, e.g. Hansson 2003, Nida-Rümelin 2005, Rath 2008, and in addition J. E. J. Altham, Ethics of Risk, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 84, (1983–1984), pp. 15–29, http://kenan.ethics.duke.edu/the-ethics-of-risk/ .

  31. Cf, e.g. as one example among many the distinctions of approaches used in the Crane and Matten (2010) textbook (Chaps. 3 and 4) which could serve as a fruitful preliminary content organiser for both business and risk ethical approaches.

  32. See various widely quoted articles of J.C. Harsanyi, such as ‘Rule utilitarianism and decision theory’ (Erkenntnis 1977) or ‘Bayesian decision theory and utilitarian ethics’ (The American Economic Review 1978), or as secondary literature Shrader-Frechette (1991), esp. Chap. 8, Hansson (2004), Rath (2008), pp 63–88, Nida-Rümelin’s contribution in Pieper, 1992, esp. pp. 160–163.

  33. Cf the Hurwitz criterion where best case and worst case scenarios are weighed, cf. Elemente…, 2006, note 9.

  34. Cf in addition to Rawls 1971, 1974, Harsanyi 1975, Rath 2008, pp. 88–112.

  35. Cf the Rio summit principle #15 http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.htm): ‘In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by states according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation…’ . About what could call ‘future ethics’ cf. e.g. Ott 2003 with further references. Cf also Enderle 2006, pp. 109-112, referring to W. Schulz' Philosophie in ver veränderten Welt, Pfullingen 1972.

  36. See for a further elaboration Rath 2008, pp. 112–141.

  37. Cf as an explanation: ‘…informed consent is a legal procedure to ensure that a patient or client knows all of the risks and costs involved in a treatment. The elements of informed consent include informing the client of the nature of the treatment, possible alternative treatments and the potential risks and benefits of the treatment. In order for informed consent to be considered valid, the client must be competent and the consent should be given voluntarily…’ (http://psychology.about.com/od/iindex/g/def_informedcon.htm).

  38. Cf as an example from the business ethics textbook literature DeGeorge (2006), with a four-step risk information checklist on p. 280.

  39. See as the primary source still Habermas 1983, pp. 53–125 (Engl. translation 1991, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, MIT Press) and perhaps Habermas 1990. Among many secondary sources cf e.g. Edgar 2005, Stansbury 2009, Beschorner 2006, Steinmann and Löhr 1994, pp 76–93, Matten, Moral im Unternehmen: Philosophische Zierleiste oder knappe Ressource?, in Haupt and Lachmann 1998, pp. 11–33.

  40. See, e.g. Noland and Phillips (2010) or in German for a nice overview Matten (1998), e.g. p. 17 or, widely quoted, Steinmann and Löhr (1994).

  41. Cf the Aristotelian virtue of courage between the extremes or vices of rashness and cowardice. As good overviews cf., e.g. the Stanford Encyclopedia article http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/ by Hursthouse or the virtue ethics article by Athanassoulis in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/v/virtue.htm. In the business ethics tradition see various works of Solomon and e.g. Dobson (2007).

  42. There is only space here to mention interesting next steps, in particular perhaps drafting a virtue ethical approach to risk and responsibility (cf Athanassoulis and Ross 2010, esp. pp. 222–224) and developing instruments for empirical attitude measurement, of risk awareness, responsibility awareness, risk seeking, risk aversion etc. and then developing typologies of attitudes towards both risk and responsibility (see Brinkmann and Aarset 2012). A more qualitative way of researching in the overlap between discourse and virtue ethics could be staging a Socratic dialogue, using the design suggested by the practical philosopher’s movement (see e.g. http://www.sfcp.org.uk/socratic_dialogue.htm; see also Brinkmann 2012, with a summary of a Socratic dialogue about ‘Taking risks responsibly’).

  43. Skeptical ethics is meant as a wider alternative label instead of, e.g. postmodern ethics, see, e.g. Gustafson (2000). About moral skepticism cf. also Baggini and Fosl (2007, pp. 235–237), with further references.

  44. Cf. as ‘authentic’ raw material for a discussion of Luhmann’s way of reasoning esp. Luhmann (1993b, pp. 330–336): ‘If risks of some kind are ubiquitous and unavoidable, then one could postulate that the problem is not taking responsibility for risks but the likelihood of avoidable mistakes when deciding about risks…’ or ‘Because morality can’t deal properly with risk as a problem it behaves risky itself’ (by increasing the insult level of political communication, p. 332).

  45. Cf once more Crane and Matten 2010, chs. 3 and 4 for a simple but pedagogically convincing presentation of normative and descriptive ethics as more equal partners than in most other introductory textbooks.

  46. Cf. the following additional clarification (ibid.):

    Enterprise risk management is:

    • A process, ongoing and flowing through an entity

    • Effected by people at every level of an organisation

    • Applied in strategy setting

    • Applied across the enterprise, at every level and unit, and includes taking an entity level portfolio view of risk

    • Designed to identify potential events that, if they occur, will affect the entity and to manage risk within its risk appetite

    • Able to provide reasonable assurance to an entity’s management and board of directors

    • Geared to achievement of objectives in one or more separate but overlapping categories.

  47. As a test one could try to replace risk with responsibility in quotations, or with risk-and-responsibility.

  48. Cf also John Boatright’s two papers (2010, 2011) which both use Power’s thoughts (2004) as a point of departure for examining financial risk management ethics and the underexploited potential synergies between ERM and CSR.

  49. In his 2004 book, Power offers two illuminating examples related to secondary risk which is essentially responsibility aversion rather than risk aversion (cf. p. 45): insignificant CEO parking fines are paid as reputational risk management (p. 32) or school trips are evaluated in terms of liability risks (pp. 42, 45).

  50. A fifth kind of solution formulated by Power is the following (abbreviated): ‘given the significance of large organisations in economic and public life, the elements of a new politics of uncertainty could be assembled at this level of society and filter “upwards” into the political domain, just as other ideas have done…’ (2004, p. 65).

  51. About moral hazard equal insurance abuse among consumers see e.g. Brinkmann and Lentz (2006) or Lesch and Brinkmann (2011), with further references.

  52. Cf Brinkmann and Aarset (2012), with a discussion of findings from a survey among Norwegian car liability insurance customers. A less familiar but better illustration than liability insurance for car owners would have been the so-called microinsurance. Cf. for an introductory presentation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microinsurance (abridged by by present author): ‘Micro-insurance is insurance with low premiums and low caps/coverage…, a financial arrangement to protect low-income people against specific perils in exchange for regular premium payments proportionate to the likelihood and cost of the risk involved…, (often) synonymous to community-based financing arrangements…, the use of insurance as an economic instrument at (the smaller than national) level of society…’ For a much broader and deeper presentation see two microinsurance compendia (Churchill 2006; Churchill and Matula 2012). In his introductory chapter, Churchill describes seven key characteristics of microinsurance for the poor which make it typically different from ‘conventional insurance’ and from ‘mainstream social-protection programmes’: (1) Relevant to the risks of low-income households, (2) As inclusive as possible, (3) Affordable premiums, (4) Grouping for efficiencies, (5) Clearly defined and simple rules and restrictions, (6) Easily accessible claims documentation requirements and (7) Strategies to overcome the wariness of customers: ‘…Microinsurance can be described as an insurance ‘back to basics’ campaign, to focus on the risk-management needs of vulnerable people, and to help them manage those risks through the solidarity of risk pooling…’ (pp. 22–24). In addition see not least SwissRe 2010, or e.g. Brinkmann and Tak 2011, or Radermacher and Brinkmann 2011, more specifically addressing the microinsurance business ethics.

  53. Insurance arrangements and insurance as a societal institution are principally interesting, beyond such examples, as a mix of complementary and in part contradictory elements, such as cognitive and normative expectations, between actuarial and legal paradigms—cf. Brinkmann and Lentz 2006, using cognitive versus normative expectations as elements for a micro-sociological understanding (p. 179), and for a meso-level understanding of the insurance business, as a mix of paradigms, referring extensively to Baker’s literature review article Insuring morality (2000). Cf. also the anthology of Ericson and Doyle 2003, with various articles addressing the same topic. As a point of departure for a risk and responsibility sharing perspective cf. Brinkmann 2007, pp. 96–10, where responsibility sharing in insurance contexts is illustrated and discussed from three angles—as pseudo-sharing, as a question of relative sovereignty of the parties and as conditional responsibility sharing.

  54. Ewald’s thoughts and formulations can be put into a thesis format:

    • ‘The term “risk”… has no precise meaning other than as a category of (insurance) technology…’ (p. 198)

    • In insurance contexts, risk ‘designates… a specific mode of treatment of certain events capable of happening to a group of individuals…’ (p. 199)

    • Risk in the meaning of insurance has three great characteristics: ‘it is calculable, it is collective and it is capital…’ (p. 201)

    • Insurance (can be defined as) ‘the compensation of effects of chance through mutuality organised according to laws of statistics…’ (p. 205)

    • Insurance is ‘an economic and financial technique, a moral technology, a technique of reparation and indemnification of damages…’ (pp. 206–207)

    • ‘Societies enter modernity once insurance becomes societal and once the societal contract takes the shape of an insurance contract. Insurance constitutes the very core of modern societies’ (p. 288).

    ‘In reality, there are no risks, but everything can become a risk, depending on how dangers are analysed and events are observed…’ (p. 295).

  55. The more old-fashioned responsibility paradigm focuses on ‘moralized personal attributes and pressures like ‘temptation’ and ‘character’’ while the more modern one focuses on ‘system efficiency’’ (Baker 2000, p. 559).

  56. Obviously, in addition to a possible extension and further elaboration of illustrations III to V above.

  57. Cf once more Brinkmann and Aarset 2012. As a pretest for this study (and as an introduction to our course in risk management and governance) a few instruments were tried out among the course participants. Risk awareness was measured with B. Rohrmann’s tools (RSQ, RPQ, ROQ, see http://www.rohrmannresearch.net/pdfs/rohrmann-racreport.pdf, while responsibility for the time being was measured with Rokeach’s terminal and instrumental values lists (see: http://www.google.no/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=0&oq=rokea&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SKPB_enNO380NO380&q=rokeach+value+survey.

  58. An example could be properly collected and analyzed burnout risk data among university teaching and research faculty, with coaching, sabbatical and early retirement schemes as main risk control mechanisms. Even with a legal HSE-responsibility, of management together with employee representatives, to prevent burnout there exists a complex sharing of organisational culture level and individual level risks and responsibilities, with golden means of leadership, faculty self-management, work flexibility (cf. Sennett 1998), eventually work–life balance.

  59. Collateralised debt obligations (i.e. bundled loan risks) and credit default swaps (i.e. insured then against bankruptcy).

  60. Cf two inspiring references instead of many, a Caux round table comment and a NYT article about risk mismanagement: http://cauxroundtable.blogspot.com/2008/10/global-prosperity-at-risk-current.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04risk-t.html?_r=3&scp=1&sq=nocera%20risk&st=cse).

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Aaron Doyle, Carleton University, Ottawa, for useful comments and native writer language editing.

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Brinkmann, J. Combining Risk and Responsibility Perspectives: First Steps. J Bus Ethics 112, 567–583 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1558-1

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