Towards responsible science and technology: How nanotechnology research and development is shaping risk governance practices in Australia

Incorporating perspectives of multiple stakeholders concerning the appropriate balance of risks and benefits of new and potentially disruptive technologies is thought to be a way of enhancing the societal relevance and positive impacts of those technologies. A risk governance approach can be instrumental in achieving balance among diverse stakeholders, as it enables decision-making processes informed by multiple dimensions of risk. This paper applies a risk governance approach to retrospectively examine the development of nanotechnology research and development (R&D) in Australia to identify how risk governance is reflected in the practices of a range of stakeholders. We identify ten risk-related challenges specific to nanotechnology R&D based on a review of the international literature, which provided the foundation for documenting how those working in the Australian nanotechnology sector responded to these global risk-related challenges. This case study research draws on a range of sources including literature review, semi-structured interviews, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches for data analysis to identify key themes and generate visualisations of the interconnections that exist between risk governance practices. The ability to visualise these interconnections from the qualitative data is a key contribution of this research. Our findings show how the qualitative insights and professional experiences of nanotechnologists provide evidence of how risk governance approaches have been operationalised in the Australian nanotechnology R&D sector. The findings generate three important insights. First, the risk research undertaken by Australian nanotechnologists is interdisciplinary and involves multiple stakeholders from various disciplines and sectors. Unlike traditional risk governance approaches, our findings document efforts to assess, not only physical risks, but also social and ethical risks. Second, nanotechnology risk governance is a non-linear process and practices undertaken to address specific challenges occurred concurrently with and contributed to addressing other challenges. Third, our findings indicate that applying a risk governance approach enables greater intersection and collaboration, potentially bridging any disconnect between scientists, policymakers, and the public to realise transdisciplinary outcomes. This research highlights opportunities for developing systematic methodologies to enable more robust risk governance of other new and emerging technologies.

Risk Governance and Bank Performance

Global discourse is geared towards greater accountability and regulatory oversight of banks to promote sound financial systems and charter value. The authors applied dynamic pool panel analysis to investigate the relationship between risk governance and financial performance among African global banks spanning the years 2015 to 2020. They find significant positive association between financial experts on risk committee and bank profitability. The results further reveal that risk committee activism as a proxy for risk committee effectiveness significantly increase bank profitability. Therefore, stakeholders must prioritize regular risk committee meetings and attach importance to risk committee compositions with finance experts on the majority. Additionally, this study offers policy implications for regulators and bank mangers to clearly define risk committee financial experts and minimum financial experts required to serve on the risk committee.

How to Build Food Safety Resilience in Commercial Restaurants?

In this chapter, food safety is portrayed as an intrinsic component of food security and food systems. The objective is to discuss the ‘commercial restaurant’ system and the ‘kitchen worker’ subsystem from the perspective of building resilience in food safety. Relationship maps built for the system and subsystem guide the presentation and discussion of structural, organisational, social and symbolic aspects and elements. Resilience investigation is based on the references of the International Risk Governance Centre Resource Guide on Resilience and current and emerging topics related to food safety, such as risk perception of foodborne diseases, cognitive illusions, sociological aspects, social dimension of taste, humanisation and working conditions and precariousness of work in kitchens. In the final section, a list of recommendations for building resilience in commercial restaurants is presented to help researchers, decision-makers and practice agents apply this concept in their fields of expertise.

Flipping the “New Penology” Script: Police Misconduct Insurance, Grassroots Activism, and Risk Management–Based Reform

Through a multi-method qualitative case study, I examine the failed 2016 ballot campaign of the Committee for Professional Policing (CfPP), a police accountability group in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In attempting to make Minneapolis the first city nationwide to require police to carry professional liability insurance, the CfPP turned the logic of Malcolm M. Feeley and Jonathan Simon’s “new penology” paradigm onto police. Their thesis argues that a contemporary penal shift occurred away from rehabilitation toward managing aggregates of dangerous criminal categories through risk management approaches. I extend their thesis in a new direction by examining how—in the emerging age of “algorithmic risk governance”—social movement organizations, like the CfPP, are starting to invert the new penology onto criminal justice personnel. In flipping the script, the CfPP called for a new private insurance market using mandatory police misconduct insurance to manage aggregates of dangerous police officers. After highlighting how the CfPP developed new penological objectives, discourses, and technologies, I discuss the implications of grassroots groups adopting and redefining traditional penal logics and propose future research avenues.

SAFETY CRITICAL MARITIME INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS RESILIENCE: A CRITICAL REVIEW

Safety Critical Maritime Infrastructure (SCMI) systems are vulnerable to diverse risks in their challenging field of operations due to their interactions and interdependence. In addition, the multiplicity of stakeholders in these systems and the complex operational scenarios are often associated with a high level of uncertainty because they usually operate in a dynamic environment in which the boundaries of safety are pushed, leading to the disruption of operations. Therefore, the safety of these systems is very important to ensuring resilience of their operations. This research is focus on the background analysis of SCMI systems. This includes operational processes of SCMI systems, security threats and estimates of economic damage to the system, resilience engineering literature relevant to maritime operations; regulatory overview including risk governance of the systems, lessons learnt from major accidents and a concluding remark is drawn.

Learning From Each Other in the Management of Natural Disaster and COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study in Taiwan

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan has been one of the best performers in the world with extremely low infections and deaths. This success can be attributed to the long experiences dealing with natural disasters and communicable diseases. However, with different disastrous characteristics, the disaster management systems for communicable diseases and natural disasters are very different in terms of laws, plans, frameworks, and emergency operations. Taking the response to COVID-19 pandemic as a study subject, we found that disaster management for communicable diseases can be improved through a comparison with natural disasters, and vice versa. First, having wider and longer impacts than natural disasters, the plans and framework for communicable diseases in Taiwan focus more on national and regional scales. Local governments would need more capacity support including budgets and training to conduct investigations and quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, for quick response, the emergency operation for communicable diseases was designed to be more flexible than that for natural disasters by giving the commander more authority to adjust to the circumstances. The commanding system requires a more objective consultation group to prevent arbitrary decisions against the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, risk governance is important for communicable diseases as well as for natural disasters. Additional efforts should be made to enhance vulnerability assessment, disaster reduction, and risk communication for shaping responses and policies in an efficient and coordinating way.