Soneryd, Linda (Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (SCORE))

Arenas for risk governance

2012-12-18T14:18:30Z

The point of departure for the ARGONA project is that participation and transparency are key elements of effective risk governance. The acronym ARGONA stands for "Arenas for Risk Governance" and the project investigates how approaches of transparency and deliberation relate to each other and also how they relate to the political system in which decisions, for example on the final disposal of nuclear waste, are ultimately taken. The project then turns to study the role played by mediators, who facilitate public engagement with nuclear waste management issues, and the conduct of the conduct of public consultations. By the latter is meant the communication of models used for deliberation and transparency. Furthermore, the project investigates how good risk communication can be organized taking cultural aspects and different arenas into account. In a central part of the project major efforts are made to test and apply approaches to transparency and participation by making explicit what it would mean to use the RISCOM model and other approaches within different cultural and organizational settings. Finally, the ARGONA partners develop guidelines for the application of novel approaches that will enhance real progress in nuclear waste management programmes.

Comparison of approaches to risk governance

2012-12-18T14:18:30Z

The project will be performed by five Work Packages: 1) Risk informed decision making 2) Precaution and risk reduction 3) Risk deliberation 4) Summer school 5) Dialogue with end users. The first three represent three approaches to risk governance. Risk informed decision making is more based on quantitative assessments than the other two. The precaution and risk reduction approaches involve both qualitative (value - laden and ethical) principles and more traditional risk assessment. The deliberative approach means that more of the risk governance is given to lay people taking their concerns and values into account. We study principles of the three approaches but also practical experiences. For example, the UK GM Nation project will give us much understanding of a deliberative and participative approach. Precaution and risk reduction will be studied using mostly examples from mobile telephone risk assessment and programmes for the cleaning up and remediation of chemically contaminated sites. The risk informed decision making approach will be studied using experiences from the energy production area. Work packages 4 is a summer school that takes place in June 2007. We will feed the summer school with substance from our case studies. We shall then in work package 5 produce a guidance document for risk governance with policy advisers and policy makers as the main target group. This will be done in interaction them and NGO:s and we shall organize two meetings with this purpose. We also initiate a standardisation process with CEN (the "European ISO").

STINT Institutional Grants for Younger Researchers: Risk Regulation, Markets and Democracy: Reorganising Economy and Society in the 21st Century

2012-12-18T14:19:50Z

Cooperation between Linda Soneryd, The Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research, SCORE, Stockholm University and Andrea Mennicken, London School of Economics and
Political Science.

Articulating complex, abstract technologies at a public arena

2012-12-18T14:19:50Z

The aim is to explore mechanisms that encourage or limit public deliberations on areas of environmental change and technological risk characterised by great uncertainty, as well as by political and social dilemmas. To raise demands for transparency and increased public involvement in the articulation of complex, abstract and relatively new technologies is asking quite a lot from citizens. In order to understand the weight of the problems that this demand raises we need an understanding of societal differentiations and changed conditions for social interaction. The theoretical frame is derived from social theory and science and technology studies. Research questions posed relate to: the boundaries drawn between the launched technology, regulating actors, knowledge fields, and its entangled publics; how public concerns are formulated by regulating authorities and social movement actors; available and negotiated actor-positions and models of human agency; the specific arrangements for transparency, public dialogue; the nature and content of the issues discussed; and how the elicitation of public concerns are geared into policies or decisions. The research uses a comparative case study approach investigating the cases of nuclear waste disposal, GMO:s in food and field trials and a new mobile phone net and radiation protection. The empirical material used is official documents, interviews with central actors and observations.

Articulating complex, abstract technologies at a public arena

2012-12-18T14:21:34Z

Welcome home: encompassing earth. A public exhibition in Stockholm on societal aspects of the environment and sustainable development

2012-12-18T14:21:46Z