Ambiguity and therapy in risk management

Ambiguity, the existence of multiple plausible (though possibly contested) ways of making sense of the characteristics of decision situations, can present significant difficulties for a wide range of risk management tasks. We will argue that ambiguity is present in risk management situations to a far greater extent that is commonly appreciated. The concept of ambiguity has arisen in different forms across disciplinary literatures and domains of practice. In this paper, we situate our experience of finding ways of supporting planning and decision-making processes concerned with ambiguous risks in the context of those wider perspectives. Our own efforts have employed a hybrid form of problem structuring methods (drawn from operational research and management science) and ethnography (drawn from sociology and anthropology). These engagements with organisational and inter-organisational risk management issues have led us to recognise that ‘untangling’ otherwise intractable risk management problems may be regarded, in some sense, as a therapeutic process. In this paper, we develop this therapeutic interpretation of the untangling of collective ambiguities using illustrations from a concrete problem situation. We set this therapeutic reading of decision processes in the context of wider perspectives, including those drawn from Habermas’ theorisation of communication, the sociology of science and the literature on citizen engagement and deliberation processes

Declining confidence in electoral fairness from those on the losing side is a serious problem – and it is getting worse

Cees van der Eijk and Jonathan Rose estimate the causal effects of the EU referendum on public perceptions of its fairness. They demonstrate that worryingly large groups of citizens have rather dim views of the fairness of electoral processes in the UK

Evidences of lay people’s reasoning related to climate change: per country and cross country results

This deliverable is about lay citizens’ reasoning about sustainability, in particular environmental protection and climate change, in various consumption domains, and the relation of this reasoning to the day-to-day lives of the participants. It presents country and cross-country findings from all 18 STAVE trials conducted between May 2011 and February 2012 in all six PACHELBEL partner countries. Analyses demonstrate that participants in the STAVE trials predominantly display a clear awareness that citizen consumption as demonstrated in their everyday practices of energy use, mobility, waste etc. are strongly connected with issues of environmental sustainablility. The STAVE trials also demonstrated that to live sustainably is a daily challenge, and people are often not able to organize their everyday routines in an environmental-friendly manner. Frequently there is a gap between participants’ aspirations and their practical behaviours. Significantly, the group conversations enabled participants to become aware that the self-assessed soundness of their everyday lives in terms of sustainability was at variance from the actual impact of e.g. their energy use or or mobility practices

Evidence about the policy assumptions about lay behaviour

This deliverable provides an analysis of the early fieldwork reports that have been produced as part of WP3. Its focus is on identifying the assumptions that are evident in the approaches of the policy partners to human behaviour around sustainability. The themes of this early work will form one focus of subsequent interactions with the policy partners and will be used as the basis for developing a schedule for further investigations to be deployed with policy makers in each countr

Policy addressing climate change & learning about consumer behaviour and everyday life : PACHELBEL

The main objective of PACHELBEL is the development, trialling and operationalisation of a tool called STAVE, which will be designed to support the work of policy-making for sustainability in real-world settings. The tool will support processes of knowledge brokerage, promoting the appropriate application of existing research findings, and the generation of new knowledge which is focused on specific policy objectives.L'objectiu principal del projecte PACHELBEL és desenvolupar, provar i operacionalitzar un instrument anomenat STAVE (Systematic Tool for Behavioural Assumption Validation and Exploration), que haurà de servir per a donar suport als dissenyadors de polítiques públiques ambientals i per la sostenibilitat. Aquesta eina servirà per gestionar millor els processos de transmissió de coneixement entre el públic i les institucions polítiques, així com per a integrar millor els resultats de les recerques socials en l'elaboració de polítiques públiques i per a generar nou coneixement al respecte

LA INVESTIGACIÓN DE OPERACIONES DE LA PLANIFICACIÓN URBANA

RESUMEN Se identifican algunas de las características que distinguen la planificación social de la planificación en el sector privado o en industrias de propiedad pública. Una revisión de los trabajos de Investigación de Operaciones (LO), tanto táctico como estratégicos, en el área de la planificación urbana, permite concluir que la corriente principal de aquella se enfrenta a la naturaleza del sistema bajo estudio. Particularmente, los problemas son formulados --o se transforman- en términos de propósitos únicos que deben ser optimizados; los aspectos del mundo social son sometidos a una cuantificación global con inevitable distorsión; los modelos hacen inverosímiles demanda de datos; la definición y la ejecución de los proyectos refuerzan la "cientificación" del debate político. los problemas son planteados sobre la hipótesis de un único y poderoso tomador de decisiones y formulados como si debieran ser resueltos en su totalidad en un momento determinado. Se sugiere que deberíamos buscar la recíproca de estas cualidades, para hallar nuevas direcciones en la aplicación de la 1.0., en la planificación urbana. Se ofrecen algunos ejemplos de técnicas y enfoques que muestran estas características alternativas. 1.- Un análisis paralelo de la contribución de la 1.1). en la planificación de Pos servicios sanitarios se encuentra en Rosenhead [1978]. 2.- Un análisis comparativo de la historia de esta rama del modelo urbano en la Gran Bretaña y los Estados Unidos se halla en Batty (19791, quien observa señales de resurgimiento después de dramáticos fracasos y desilusiones anteriores.&nbsp