Reconstructing Precaution, Deconstructing Misconceptions

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Arcuri
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
International Level ◽  
Environmental Preservation ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Over Time

The precautionary principle, widely endorsed at the national and international level, continues to be at the center of a heated debate. Some authors claim that the principle is unscientific; others argue that the principle is paralyzing and gives decision-makers no direction. Confusion and misconceptions are generated by the multiplicity of definitions and interpretations of the precautionary principle. This essay contributes to the debate on the precautionary principle in two ways: (1) it clarifies what a mild formulation of the principle entails, and (2) it identifies a number of misconceptions underlying some of the main criticisms of the principle.A reasonable formulation of the precautionary principle requires both substantive and procedural elements: the substantive element suggests that in circumstances where uncertainties and risks of irreversible harms are present, decisions should err on the side of environmental preservation; the procedural element suggests that the principle should favour decision-making processes that are iterative and informative over time and that integrate experts' assessments of the risks to be governed and people's preferences and values.Against this background, five misconceptions underlying the main criticisms of the precautionary principle are identified and deconstructed. The analysis of the misconceptions sheds further light on the fact that following the principle, processes of learning are stimulated, and accordingly, technology is not halted; to the contrary, the application of the principle leads to a better understanding of technological developments and their effects.

scholarly journals Implementing the Precautionary Principle through Stakeholder Engagement for Product and Service Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Carmela Cucuzella ◽  
Pierre De Coninck
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Stakeholder Engagement ◽  
Alternative Assessment ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Service Development ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Decision Making Processes

The precautionary principle is a sustainable development principle that attempts to articulate an ethic in decision making since it deals with the notion of uncertainty of harm. Uncertainty becomes a weakness when it has to serve as a predictor by which to take action. Since humans are responsible for their actions, and ethics is based in action, then decisions based in uncertainty require an ethical framework. Beyond the professional deontological responsibility, there is a need to consider the process of conception based on an ethic of the future and therefore to develop a new ethical framework which is more global and fundamental. This will expose the justifications for choices, present these in debates with other stakeholders, and ultimately adopt an axiology of decision making for conception. Responsibility and participative discourse for an equal justice among actors are a basis of such an ethic. By understanding the ethical framework of this principle and applying this knowledge towards design or innovation, the precautionary principle becomes operational. This paper suggests that to move towards sustainability, stakeholders must adopt decision making processes that are precautionary. A commitment to precaution encourages a global perspective and the search for alternatives. Methods such as alternative assessment and precautionary deliberation through stakeholder engagement can assist in this shift towards sustainability.

The Controllability Precautionary Principle: Justification of a Climate Policy Goal Under Uncertainty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugen Pissarskoi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Goal ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Climate Change Policies

How can we reasonably justify a climate policy goal if we accept that only possible consequences from climate change are known? Precautionary principles seem to offer promising guidelines for reasoning in such epistemic situations. This chapter presents two versions of the precautionary principle (PP) and defends one of them as morally justifiable. However, it argues that current versions of the PP do not allow discrimination between relevant climate change policies. Therefore, the chapter develops a further version of the PP, the Controllability Precautionary Principle (CPP), and defends its moral plausibility. The CPP incorporates the following idea: in a situation when the possible outcomes of the available actions cannot be ranked with regard to their value, the choice between available options for action should rest on the comparison of how well decision makers can control the processes of the implementation of the available strategies.

Framing Information Technology Governance in the Public Sector: Opportunities and Challenges

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 89-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khalifa Al-Farsi ◽  
Ramzi EL Haddadeh
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Technology ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
It Governance ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Technology Governance ◽  
Support Organizations ◽  
Information Technology Governance ◽  
Decision Making Processes

Information technology governance is considered one of the innovative practices that can provide support for decision-makers. Interestingly, it has become increasingly a de facto for organizations in seeking to optimise their performance. In principle, information technology governance has emerged to support organizations in the integration of information technology (IT) infrastructures and the delivery of high-quality services. On the other hand, decision-making processes in public sector organisations can be multi-faceted and complex, and decision makers play an important role in implementing technology in the public sector. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on current opportunities and challenges that IT governance is experiencing in the context of public sector services. In this respect, this paper examines the factors influencing the decision-making process to fully appreciate IT governance. Furthermore, this study focuses on combining institutional and individual perspectives to explain how individuals can take decisions in response to institutional influences.

scholarly journals ‘When the Numbers Stop Adding’: Imagining Futures in Perilous Presents Among Youth in Nairobi Ghettos

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi van Stapele
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Youth Gangs ◽  
Social Navigation ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Relational Concept ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Over Time

AbstractStudying the aspirations of young men, in Mathare, Nairobi, highlights their social becoming in contexts in which they incessantly risk social and physical death. Taking aspiration as a relational concept brings into view the temporal and spatial interactions between different aspirations and how these connect to emerging and future pathways of these young men. The ensuing relationalities at play are analysed through their context-bound negotiations of dominant gender norms to elucidate how these inform their social navigation towards male respectability, now and in the future. Adding the dimension of positionality here is useful to bring out how individual negotiations of gender norms in space and over time allows a nuanced view on situated entanglements of aspirations, pathways and dominant discourses and how these convolute and intensify in particular decision-making processes. The analyses are based on longitudinal ethnographic research with youth gangs in Nairobi for four months annually on average since 2005.

Conclusion: SDO Decision-making and the Public Interest

2020 ◽  
pp. 210-237
Author(s):  
Alison Harcourt ◽  
George Christou ◽  
Seamus Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
International Level ◽  
Multiple Streams ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurship ◽  
Historical Representation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Decision Making Processes

The conclusion situates the book’s findings in academic debates on democracy and the Internet, global self-regulation, and civil society, and international decision-making processes in unstructured environments. It assesses whether current standards-developing organization (SDO) decision-making is able to bridge historical representation gaps and deficiencies. A nuanced pattern is emerging with increasing inclusion of a wider number of actors within SDO fora. The first part of the chapter returns to the Multiple Streams (MS) framework applied to the case studies on a comparative basis. It identifies key processes under which SDO rules of interaction are established at the international level and explains which interests have come to the fore within decision-making highlighting the occurrence of policy entrepreneurship, forum shopping, and coupling. The final part explores additional frameworks for SDO regulation where spaces for public interest consideration might occur in the future. These are opportunities for inserting public interest considerations into international and national Acts, certification programmes, and the move towards open source solutions for Internet management. The book concludes that, although the literature is expansive on the interaction of corporate sector actors within SDOs, the study of other actors, such as digital rights groups, civil society, academics, policy entrepreneurs and the technical community as a whole, has been underdressed in the literature on international self-regulatory fora to date. In this respect, the book raises important questions of representation of the public interest at the international level by having addressed the actions of actors within SDO fora who promote public interest goals.

Activity-Based Methodology for Development and Analysis of Integrated DoD Architectures

2007 ◽  
pp. 85-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Ring
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
The Core ◽  
Analysis Strategies ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Integrated Architecture ◽  
Architecture Development ◽  
Support Decision Making

This chapter describes the activity-based methodology (ABM), an efficient and effective approach to-ward development and analysis of DoD integrated architectures that will enable them to align with and fully support decision-making processes and mission outcomes. ABM consists of a tool-independent disciplined approach to developing fully integrated, unambiguous, and consistent DODAF Operational, System, and Technical views in supporting both “as-is” architectures (where all current elements are known) and “to-be” architectures (where not all future elements are known). ABM enables architects to concentrate on the Art and Science of architectures—that is identifying core architecture elements, their views, how they are related together, and the resulting analysis used for decision-making purposes. ABM delivers significant architecture development productivity and quality gains by generating several DoDAF products and their elements from the core architecture elements. ABM facilitates the transition from integrated “static” architectures to executable “dynamic” process models for time-dependent assessments of complex operations and resource usage. Workflow steps for creating integrated architecture are detailed. Numerous architecture analysis strategies are presented that show the value of integrated architectures to decision makers and mission outcomes.

scholarly journals The Influence of Core Self-Evaluations on Group Decision Making Processes: A Laboratory Experiment

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Cristofaro ◽  
Pier Luigi Giardino ◽  
Luna Leoni
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Simulation Game ◽  
Manufacturing Firm ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Team Decision ◽  
High Level ◽  
Overconfidence Bias ◽  
Core Self

The personal trait called Core Self-Evaluations (CSE) has been receiving increasing attention from behavioral strategy scholars due to its ability to predict job performance and to explain some facets of decision-making processes. However, despite previous studies hypothesizing that managers with high values of CSE are intuitive thinkers, beyond any doubt of their capacities and that they significantly lead to positive results for their organization, no one has empirically investigated these assumptions. This gap can be substantiated by the following research question: “How do high Core Self-Evaluations influence team decision-making processes?”. Answering it provides insights on how the evaluations that decision makers make about situations (and the consequent actions that are implemented) highly depend on decision makers’ inner traits and their effect on cognition. To fill this gap, 120 graduate students—divided into groups of four—took part in a simulation game and were asked to make decisions acting the role of General Manager of a small-sized manufacturing firm. Tests aimed at identifying the CSE and intuitive/reflecting thinking approach of participants were administered; moreover, the performance resulting from their decision-making processes and their estimation of reached results were collected. Results show that an average level of CSE is preferable to balance intuitive and reflective thinking, as well as avoiding overconfidence bias and reaching the best performance possible. This work suggests that there is a huge misattribution in considering a high level of CSE as being beneficial for decision-making processes and consequent performance.

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