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Dimensions of risk
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Risk Assessment : The process of determining the degree of risk associated with a certain product or process using scientific methods such as epidemological study or animal bioassay. While using scientific procedures to gain a measure of exactness, risk assessment still brings with it a remainder of uncertainty that cannot be eliminated. A risk assessment issues into two uncertainties, the uncertainty as to whether the harm will occur and the uncertainty as to who (out of the many exposed) will be harmed. Ethics enters into the picture as stakeholders negotiate how to deal with and distribute this uncertainty. Responsible risk practice requires integrating the conflicting values and interests of the involved stakeholders in assessing, communicating, perceiving, and managing risk. It also requires a basis of trust that is difficult to build up given the diverse players that make up the risk taking and bearing situation.
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Risk Management : The political/social/ethical process of determining if a risk of a certain degree is acceptable given the settled value principles generally held in the community of the risk bearers. Responsible risk management requires (a) assessing harm through the responsible exercise of scientific method and (b) communicating the assessed risk to those likely to bear it. Responsible risk management (i) honors rights such as free and informed consent and due process, (ii) avoids conflicts of interests in determining and communicating risk, (iii) conscientiously works toward a just distribution of risks and benefits, and (iv) avoids paternalism.
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Risk Perception : How people perceive risk differs from the strict, scientifically determined degree of risk. For example, risk perception factors in voluntariness, control, expected benefits, lack of knowledge, and dread of adverse consequences in working toward a judgment on the acceptability of a given risk by the community of risk bearers. Because the public perceives risk over this broad background of scientific, social, political, and ethical factors, it frequently arrives at conclusions at odds with judgments reached using strictly scientific methods. Those taking a paternalistic attitude toward the public take this difference as evidence of the irrationality of the public and the need for the experts to taken things into their own hands. However, the public attitude toward risk is intelligible and rational when this broader, risk perception perspective is taken into account.
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Risk Communication : This dimension focuses on how to communicate risk information to risk bearers in order to facilitate distributive justice, free and informed consent, and due process. Responsible risk communication requires translating scientifically determined information into a non-technical vocabulary. Analogies and comparisons help as does the use of concrete language and commonly understood images. But improper use of comparisions and analogies confuses the public and undermines trust.
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Public : “those persons whose lack of information, technical knowledge, or time for deliberation renders them more or less vulnerable to the powers an engineer wields on behalf of his client or employer” Davis
Source:
OpenStax, Business ethics. OpenStax CNX. Sep 04, 2013 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10491/1.11
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