Risk management in local authorities: an application of Schatzki’s social site ontology

Abstract

Prior research has devoted limited attention to studying changes in organisational risk management (RM) practices. This is despite continuous dissatisfaction from academics and practitioners with organisations’ ability to manage risks. We draw on Schatzki’s social site ontology to study RM practices of two New Zealand local authorities that both experienced (earthquake) risk events and whose RM practices could be expected to change. We extend recent research utilising Schatzki, by finding that practical intelligibility and general understanding mutually affect each other in the organising of practices. Further, we extend Nama and Lowe’s (2014) addition to Schatzki by highlighting the importance of including teleological structures and accounting devices into the mutually constitutive relationship between general understanding and affectivity. Finally, we contribute to RM literature by proposing that changing the general understanding (in addition to the mere implementation of RM tools) is an important way of making RM change fundamental and sustainable.