Risk Management and Society

Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research

VOLUME 16

EDITORIAL BOARD

Wang Ang-Sheng, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Beijing, P.R. China

Gerhard Berz, Miinchener Riickversicherungs-Gesel/schaft, Miinchen, Germany

Oscar Gonzalez-Ferran, Departamento de Geologia y Geofisica, Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas y Mathematicas, Universidad De Chile, Santiago, Chile

Cinna Lomnitz, National University of Mexico, Instituto de Geofisica, Mexico, D.F. Mexico

Tad S. Murty, Baird & Associates, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Alvin H. Mushkatel, Office of Hazards Studies, Center for Public Affairs, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

Joanne M. Nigg, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

Alexei V. Nikolaev, Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

Paul M. Thompson, Flood Hazard Research Center, Middlesex University, Enfield, UK

Donald A. Wilhite, International Drought Information Center, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA

The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

Risk Management and Society

Edited by

EVE COLES and DENIS SMITH Centre for Risk and Crisis Management. University of Sheffield. u.K.

and

STEVE TOMBS Liverpool John Moores University. u.K.

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.v.

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-90-481-5682-5 ISBN 978-94-017-2913-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-2913-0

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved

© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Oordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Barry Turner, in thanks for the inspiration.

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors xi

Acknowledgements xv

Of course it's safe, trust me! Conceptualising issues of risk 1 management within the 'Risk Society' Denis Smith & Steve Tombs

A case study in risk management: the UK pumped storage business 31 A. Ian Glendon, Bryan O'Loughlin & Richard T.Booth

Challenging the orthodoxy in risk management: The Need for a 53 paradigm shift? Clive Smallman

Incentives for loss prevention instead of disaster management 81 by the state in the case of catastrophic risks Walter R. Stahel

History repeating itself? Expertise, barriers to learning and 101 the precautionary principle. Denis Smith & Jo McCloskey

The social construction and deconstruction of risk 125 Heather Hopjl

Opening Pandora's box: Stress at work and its 143 implications for emergency management Denis Smith & Dominic Elliott

Questions of risk and regulation: Hegemony, governance 165 and the US chemical industry Frank Pearce & Steve Tombs

Injury, death and the deregulation fetish: The politics of 189 occupational safety regulation in UK manufacturing industries Steve Tombs

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Deregulation and BSE 207 Christopher Gifford

The political economy of risk: Piper Alpha and the 227 British offshore oil industry M Beck &C Woolfson

Learning the lessons of Piper Alpha? Offshore workers' 263 perceptions of changing levels of risk David Whyte

Changing perceptions of risk: The Implications for Management 28S Eve Coles, Denis Smith & Steve Tombs

Index 297

FOREWORD

This collection of essays represents a range of perspectives on the management of risk within the modem age. Our concern in bringing this work together was to provide readers with access to a multi-disciplinary account of the issues and to ensure that critical perspectives on the issues of risk management were encouraged. Three criteria have been employed in selecting contributions to this volume. First, we have made a judgement regarding the quality of respective contributions - thus as editors we have asked, To what extent does this contribution, taken in isolation, represent a contribution to an understanding of the various elements of 'risk management and society'? Second, to what extent do the contributions as whole produce a coherent text. Finally we are concerned to ascertain to what extent do the contributions actually reflect the range of work - in particular, the diversity of methodological approaches, objects of enquiry, and theoretical and political frameworks that constitute the area of risk management?

This collection owes a debt of thanks to the late Barry Turner. The genesis of this collection came at a meeting in Liverpool, an event overshadowed by Barry's death just as the conference started. Barry had been a keynote speaker at the first risk conference, which was held in Bolton, and he had set the scene for the second conference, which was held in Liverpool. The decision to bring together a range of researchers around many of the issues raised by Barry's work came out of discussions at the Liverpool conference and subsequent events held in Bradford and Durham.

Many of the contributors to this volume had known Barry as a generous supporter of new research talent within the field of risk and disaster management. Barry's contribution to the field is immeasurable. His early work on disasters was a landmark study that represented the first major attempt of the social sciences to deal with the issues of disaster management. More importantly, he introduced the concept of crisis/disaster incubation in which the actions of management and those responsible for the control of the system played an active role in creating the preconditions under which that failure took place. For all of us, Barry's death was premature and it deprived the academic community of one of its most innovative thinkers. We all owe him a considerable debt of gratitude. It is to his memory that this book is dedicated.

Denis Smith Steve Tombs Eve Coles

Sheffield and Liverpool

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Matthias Beck formerly lectured at the Universities of St Andrews and Glasgow before taking up his current appointment as a Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University. In collaboration with Charles Woolfson and John Foster he has published extensively on health and safety issues and regulation, both in the UK offshore oil sector and in onshore industry. In addition, he has written a number of articles on financial regulation and dual labour markets.

Richard Booth is Professor of Occupational Safety and Health at Aston University. He is the author of about 175 papers, articles and chapters in edited books on health and safety management and safety technology. He is Chairman of Health and Safety Technology and Management Ltd (HAST AM). He was founder-Chairman of the UK National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health from 1979 to 1986 and President of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) from 1986 to 1988.'

Eve Coles is a research associate within the Centre for Risk and Crisis Management at Sheffield University Management School. She was formerly editor of 'Emergency' and was assistant editor of a nine volume series on Natural Hazards and Disasters with Alf Keller. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Civil Defence and Disaster Studies and of The Royal Societ-y of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce. Her research interests include emergency planning and management, risk and crisis management and public sector management. She has published in various journals including Local Government Studies, Public Money and Management and The Australian Journal of Emergency Management.

Dominic Elliot is a Senior Lecturer in Strategic Marketing at the Centre for Risk and Crisis Management, University of Sheffield. He regularly speaks on the subjects of Crisis and Strategic Management at national and international conferences and as a visiting lecturer at a number of universities. Reflecting the practical focus of his work he has worked as a consultant and trainer with senior executives from a range of organisations including: Chartered Institute of Marketing, IBM, Philips Electronics, Government of Lesotho, Football Association, Royal Mail, Transco and the Department of Trade and Industry. He has published many articles and books in the fields of Strategic and Crisis Management and Business Continuity. Dominic founded the Centre for Business Continuity Planning at De Montfort University and is a Fellow of the Business Continuity Institute. Dr. Elliott is Review's Editor for Risk Management: An International Journal.

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Christopher Gifford is a consultant mining engineer. Until is retirement from full time work he was HM District Inspector of Mines and Quarries in the Health and Safety Executive. He is a regular contributor to seminars and conferences and his interests lie in health and safety and regulation.

Ian Glendon is Associate Professor in Applied Psychology at Griffith University (Gold Coast Campus), Australia. He is a psychologist specialising in organisational issues, has been active in the risk cognition and risk management field since 1975 and has worked on numerous research and consultancy projects. Topics include risk cognition; accident and disease reporting; analysis of accident injury data; risk homeostatsis; employee involvement in health and safety; human error and reliability; occupational stress; health and safety management; safety culture and safety auditing; risk management; human factors; health and safety expertise. He has written over 100 book chapters, journal papers, reports, booklets, manuals, professional articles and other publications as well as presenting over 80 papers at national and international conferences in around a dozen different countries. He has co-authored three books in the field of human safety and risk management.

Heather Hopjl is Professor of Organisational Psychology and Head of the School of Operations Analysis and Human Resource Management at Newcastle Business School, University of Northumbria at Newcastle. She is an Adjunct Professor of the University of South Australia and a Visiting Professor of the Academy of Entrepreneurship in Warsaw and of Bolton Institute, UK. She is a former Chair of the Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism (SCOS) and a Fellow of the British Academy of Management and is on the editorial boards of a number of major journals. Her research interests are primarily in the field of organisational performance and the tacit and taken for granted aspects of organisational behaviour. From 1990 - 1995 she worked on the development of an interpretative environment around the safety function with British Airways. She is currently working with Prof George Schreyoegg of the Free University of Berlin on aspects of organisational performance and with Prof Hugo Letiche of the Humanistic University of Utrecht on theatre and film in the analysis of organisational behaviour.

Jo McCloskey is Head of the Marketing School at Bristol Business School. She has previously taught at Liverpool John Moores and De Montford Universities and has worked in a range of higher education institutions in Ireland and Africa. She has a wide range of consultancy experience having undertaken projects in North America, Africa and Europe. Her research interests are in Strategic Marketing, Corporate Communications Strategies and Risk and Crisis Management. She has published in several journals such as Public Money and Management, Management Decision and Management Learning and has contributed to a number of books that have been re­printed and translated into European editions.

Bryan O'Loughlin Graduated in Electrical Engineering at Manchester University in 1963 and spent a career in the electricity supply industry. Initial experience as an operational engineer, joining the Safety Branch of the Electricity Council in 1972. He is

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manager of the Health and Safety Branch and Safety Advisor to National Grid Company until 1994. Now Visiting Fellow at Aston University.

Frank Pearce is a Professor of Sociology at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario. He has published extensively in North America and the UK on social theory and on corporate crime. He is author of Crimes o/the Powerful (Pluto, 1976) and the Radical Durkheim (Unwin Hyman, 1989), and Toxic Capitalism: corporate crime and the chemical industry, (with Steve Tombs. Ashgate. 1998. Canadian Scholars'. Press. 1999); he also co-edited Global Crime Connections (with Mike Woodiwiss. Macmillan, 1993) and Corporate Crime: contemporary debates (with Laureen Snider. University of Toronto Press, 1995).

Clive Smallman is Senior Research Associate at the Judge Institute of Management Studies and a Fellow of Hughes Hall. University of Cambridge. He is a corporate member of the British Computer Society (MBCS). a chartered information systems practitioner. a graduate member of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (GIMA) and is an affiliate member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. He has previously worked for Marconi Research. the Prudential. British Gas. General Accident. and Admiral Consulting. He joined the Bradford University Management Centre in 1992 and moved to Cambridge in May 1999. His main research interest is in operational risk management (managing risks in business processes and the people that operate them). and central to this is the management of information and knowledge.

Denis Smith is Professor of Management at the University of Sheffield where he is also head of the Strategy. Systems and Management Division. In addition. he is head of the Centre for Risk and Crisis Management. which has been operating as a research group under his leadership since 1990. Prior to his appointment at Sheffield. he had been Professor of Management at both the University of Durham and Liverpool John Moores University. where he was also head of Liverpool Business School. He has previously held faculty positions at the University of Manchester. Nottingham Trent University and De Montfort University (Leicester). He has also been visiting professor of Human Resource Management at Kobe University in Japan. visiting professor of Strategic Management at the University of Sheffield and a visiting adjunct professor at San Diego State University in the USA. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. a Fellow of the Institute of Personnel and Development as well as being a member of a number of professional bodies including. the Ergonomics Society and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. His post-doctoral studies were in the area of science and technology policy and his current research interests include: social issues surrounding the use of new technology; technology transfer and innovation; latent error potential in health care systems; crisis incubation and escalation within organisations; risk perception and communication; crisis learning; latent human error in systems failure; and environmental management. Outside of his university activities, Professor Smith is a non-executive director of St Helens Rugby League Football Club and has previously served in a similar capacity for Mersey Regional Ambulance Service. During

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1999-2000 he also served as a member of the Ministerial Expert Committee, 'Learning from Experience in the National Health Service', chaired by the Chief Medical Officer.

Walter Stahel is an alumni of ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in ZUrich, where he received his diploma in architecture in 1971. He has joined the Geneva Association (International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics) in 1987, as director in charge of risk management research. He is also one of the founder­directors of the Product-Life Institute and was previously a project-manager at the Battelle Geneva Research Centres, Geneva, Centre for applied economics, in the fields of business strategy and feasibility studies. He is been a member of the first Environmental Council of the German Railways, and of the Umweltrat of the UmweltBank, NUrnberg, since its foundation in 1997. He was member of the Jury of the SHE (Safety, Health and Environment) Excellence Awards 1996, 1998 and 1999 of Du Pont de Nemours. He is a member of the Eco-Dream-Team of Interface Inc, Atlanta GA, and of the work group on "Basic Needs" for the world exhibition EXPO 2000 Hannover. He is the author of books and numerous articles on policies, strategies and tools to foster an economic and societal development towards a more sustainable society.

Steve Tombs is a Professor of Sociology in the Centre for Criminal Justice, Liverpool John Moores University. He has a long-standing interest in the incidence, nature and regulation of corporate crime. His main recent publications are Corporate Crime (Longman, 1999), with Gary Slapper, and Toxic Capitalism: corporate crime and the chemical industry, (Ashgate, 1998, Canadian Scholars' Press, 1999), with Frank Pearce. He is Chair of the Centre for Corporate Accountability.

Dave Whyte is a Lecturer in Criminology at Manchester Metropolitan University, and until recently a researcher at the Centre for Criminal Justice, Liverpool John Moores University. He has written widely on the regulation of worker safety in the UK oil industry, on corporate crime and on the Scottish legal system in various journals and forums, including: The Big Issue, Blowout, Industrial Relations Journal, Occupational Safety and Health, Public Money and Management, Social and Legal Studies, and Studies in Political Economy.

Charles Woolfson is currently Director of Faculty of Social Sciences Graduate School (Associate Dean), Deputy Director of the Centre for Regulatory Studies and Director of the European Centre of Occupational Health, Safety and the Environment (ECOHSE). In collaboration with Matthias Beck and John Foster he has published extensively on health and safety issues and regulation, both with respect to the UK offshore oil sector and to onshore industry. In addition, with John Foster he has written a number of monographs on industrial conflict.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In a book of this nature, there are inevitably a number of people who have made a major contribution to bringing the manuscript to a final version. In particular, we would like to thank Petra van Steenbergen and Manja Fredriksz of Kluwer for their support throughout the period at which the book was pulled together and for their patience with three editors who seemed, at times, continually to be moving around the UK's university sector! Alf Keller also deserves our thanks for his initial support and encouragement. Thanks must also go to Christine Jawad, Anne Hardy and Mandy Robertson for their secretarial support throughout the various stages of the book. Chris and Anne deserve a particular thanks for putting the papers into their final camera ready copy. Anne also deserves a special mention for her re-drawing of the diagrams for the 'Loss Prevention' chapter.

Each of the chapters were sent out to scholars and practitioners for review and comment. This is a difficult and time consuming task and we owe each of those individuals a vote of thanks. They include: Mark Butler, Mike Clark, Kevin Daniels, Dominic Elliott, David Evans, Ken Green, Richard Griffiths, Alan Irwin, Jane Jacks, Trevor Sheldon, Paul Sparrow, Brian Wynne

Finally, thanks are also due to our various families for support and patience during the period when we each seemed to be attached to our respective computers. Eve Coles would like to thank all her family for putting up with an inattentive wife and mother. To Jim go particular thanks for the job he did on some of the diagrams and for not complaining when forced to live off ready meals and takeaways! Denis Smith would like to express his thanks to Janice, Rachael and Liam for their understanding and support -yes Liam, it is OK to type on the computer now. Steve Tombs wishes to thank, for their various forms of advice, support and friendship, David Bergman, Alan Dalton, Chris Gifford, Pete Gill, Rory O'Neil, Frank Pearce, Gary Slapper, Joe Sim, Dave Whyte and Charles Woolfson. Particular thanks go to Pam and Patrick, who have carried the burdens which have yet again been forced on them by a partially absent partner and father with smiles and love. All three would like to acknowledge the intellectual debt that they owe to the late Barry Turner to whom this book is dedicated.

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