摘要:

Increasingly, law and legal institutions must deal with hazards and their attendant risks. This special issue of Law and Policy examines a variety of organizational responses to this challenge. Examples of the behavior of firms and of regulatory agencies suggest the outlines of a sociolegai paradigm of risks and risk‐related behavio

ISSN:0265-8240    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9930.1989.tb00028.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This paper addresses the issue of corporate risk management strategies in dealing with products liability law. It views risk management as the dependent variable. How do attributes of the firm and of the law of products liability influence the risk management practices of the corporation? Drawing on the work of Oliver Williamson and others, the paper views the firm as a boundedly rational organization that must devote significant resources in monitoring and controlling its agents. This is especially costly in an environment where the measure of adequate performance (i.e. the design, manufacturing and marketing of a non‐defective product) is uncertain and where the criteria used by legal actors (judges and juries) to judge product defectiveness, may vary substantially from the criteria used by the firm's engineers and scientists. Both the costs of control and the level of legal uncertainty are variables. Together they combine to shape a firm's risk management strateg

ISSN:0265-8240    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9930.1989.tb00029.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

American libel law presents profound dilemmas about how to provide compensation to individuals for injury to their reputation without destroying First Amendment values of free expression and unfettered public debate. This paper looks at the substantial legal costs incurred by publishers and broadcasters in defending themselves against charges of libel, the response of the courts to limit press self‐censorship occasioned by the risks of libel litigation, and the perverse effect they both have on the social construction of the news. These tensions are captured in the role of the media lawyer who reviews news stories prior to publication or broadcast and advises editors about libel risks. Data are presented from interviews of 53 in‐house and outside counsel who regularly review stories for newspapers, television stations and networks, magazines, and other news organizations. A paradox emerges: media lawyers, in pursuit of constitutional protections of free speech, have come to enforce responsible journalism, while subtly chilling and shaping the ways the news is t

ISSN:0265-8240    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9930.1989.tb00030.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Economists often claim that the tort system leads firms to provide consumers and workers with the socially optimal level of safety. Moreover, in the case of work‐related hazards, employers are alleged to have another source of incentives to take precautions. If wages are sensitive to job‐related risks, employers should spend money to reduce such risks when, by doing so, they can save more in wage costs than the costs of the precautions taken.Whatever their merits in other settings, in the case of latent injuries such as workplace exposure to asbestos neither tort nor market are likely to provide an optimal level of safety; indeed, they have failed to do so in the examples we discuss. We find that the introduction of a long delay between the exposure to a hazard and the onset of symptoms introduces a variety of empirical complications that overwhelm the assumptions on which the neoclassical model rests. Our conclusion is thus that comparisons between tort and alternative systems of deterrence/compensation should start from an empirical assessment of how the tort system actually works (and doesn't work), rather than beginning with misleading theoretical claims about the system's optimal

ISSN:0265-8240    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9930.1989.tb00031.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This analysis describes how the NASA organization contributed to the loss of the Challenger on January 28, 1986. The competitive environment, NASA organization characteristics (its structure, processes, and transactions), and the regulatory environment all influenced the decision to proceed with the launch. To be effective, strategies to control, change, or eliminate undesireable behavior should address the cause of that behavior. Understanding how organizations contribute to technical system accidents leads to the conclusion that efforts to reduce accidents in risky technological systems must include the organizations that produce them. Suggestions for policy aimed at curtailing organizational‐technical system accidents are discusse

ISSN:0265-8240    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9930.1989.tb00032.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

New approaches to risk and uncertainty require a consideration of the collective nature of risks, how they are defined and managed, and how complex social organizations, especially regulatory bodies, are created and mandated to define, manage and reassure publics concerning these designated risks. Sociological analyses of risk should entail analysis of modes of enstructuration, and close ethnographically based descriptions of working institutions. This study explores aspects of the political economy of risks, the selective typification of risks, a regulatory body's practices, and the intra‐organizational relations that pattern risk management. Based on fieldwork, the two year plus study of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) in Britain, includes extensive in depth interviews, clippings and historical documents. The purpose of the Nil is to insure that the licensees who operate nuclear installations do so within the stated principles of safety and conditions of the license, and do so by reasonable practical means. The social construction of the management of risk is shaped by the larger political economy, the NII itself through evolving of its mandate, strategies and tactics, and by cultural assumptions about safety and trust in government. Two types of uncertainty shape NII's practices: background factors of importance affecting nuclear safety beyond their direct control, and foreground factors, some of which they claim responsibility for managing. The latter include technological questions, individual risks of radioactive exposure, and collective threats and risks (of cataclysmic accidents). Historical and field data demonstrate a narrowing and refining of the workings of the NII.: through enstructuring a pattern of roles, rules and resources are allocated to narrow objectives and goals; by evolving a set of beliefs or ideologies spelling out the political and moral obligations of NII and the industry the mandate is legitimated; and by employing a licensing strategy for insuring safety many potential paradoxes are obviated. Thus, the work of insuring safety in an extremely risky industry is seen to have been accomplished. Further investigation of the social construction of collective risk is urge

ISSN:0265-8240    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9930.1989.tb00033.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This paper explores what, in the context of occupational health and safety regulation, the idea of risk means to legal actors whose task is to assess and act upon risks. It argues that while the occupational risk to the worker is important because it may prompt a regulatory response and it informs decisions about enforcement strategy, the decision‐maker contemplating formal legal action will become preoccupied with the risks posed by the legal process to the successful prosecution of the case. The legal risks arise from the nature of regulatory work and the form and character of regulatory law. Legal decisionmakers respond to these risks in a systematic fashion preferring to prosecute cases which are quick, straightforward and unlikely to be defended. This leads to the selection of cases which are breaches of absolute (rather than general) duties and violations of provisions relating to safety rather than health, thereby skewing the application of enforcemen

ISSN:0265-8240    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9930.1989.tb00034.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The centrality of risk assessment and risk management to complex organizations testifies to the institutionalization of risk in modern society. Much of the writing on risk assessment and management deals with how decision makers struggle with uncertainty rather than calculable risk. The conceptualization of risk and uncertainty depends in part upon whether one focuses upon decision makers and their decisions or upon outcomes of decisions. Focusing on decision makers leads to concern with risk management whereas focusing on the decision or outcomes draws attention to risk analysis. The papers examined in this paper are primarily concerned with decision makers and risk management. In doing so, we examine the social construction of risks and their control, how intelligence gathering and processing affects risk analysis and management, and the latent functions of risk regulation.

ISSN:0265-8240    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9930.1989.tb00035.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY