The Risk of Risk Registers – Managing Risk is Managing Discourse Not Tools

2011/09/20 by Alexander Budzier · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Decision Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Risk Perception and Management #Complex Systems and Decision Making #Management and Organizational Studies

paper · doi:10.1057/jit.2011.13

openalex publication_date 2011/09/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23

Abstract

This response to Drummond (2011) argues that risk registers, despite their drawbacks, are a useful tool in organizations. Their main function is to act as a boundary object, bridging the intra- and extra-organizational discourse about the risks and organization is facing. Thus their effectiveness should not be measured in truthfulness but in terms of their ability to establish communicative rationality for which both quantitative and qualitative insights are necessary.

Citations

• Institutional Ecology, `Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39
• A Protection Motivation Theory of Fear Appeals and Attitude Change1
• The psychology of interpersonal relations.

Cited by

• Risk register [wikipedia]