Governing safe operations at a distance
Enacting responsible risk communication at work
This chapter argues that today’s organisational risk management, where
employees are to adopt routines for proper self-control, is fruitfully approached
as what Rose and Miller (1992) term governing-at-a-distance. Governing that
relies on internal control and the self-governing capacity of citizens requires
people to be involved in communication that signifies responsible behaviour.
If there is hierarchical monitoring, then it is communication that is supervised
which makes the signifying practices all the more important. While previous
research has demonstrated that an increasing burden of responsibility is placed
on citizens for the risks and health problems they face or envisage, less attention
has been paid to the increased communication requirements this development
involves. Bridging this gap, this chapter investigates how social interaction in
meetings works to facilitate employees to become responsible risk communication
subjects. An intensive discourse analysis of five safety meeting episodes
demonstrates how the responsibilisation of employees’ risk communication
extends questions of (a) form – such as the duration of talk, (b) paper work,
(c) genuineness, (d) contributing on-topic, (e) economisation, and (f) reliability
regardless of illness and place. The study takes inspiration from positioning
analysis (e.g. Bamberg 2005), allowing for a detailed account of the moment-tomoment
process of responsibilisation, something that previous research on risk
management tends to skim over.
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