Abstract

The process of risk regulation is crucial across a range of institutions, sectors and industries. Regulatory bodies worldwide are confronted with a plethora of challenges in managing risks and uncertainties. The precise sources of these challenges are diverse, but are commonly associated with the degree of confidence in predicting and quantifying risks. When the level of confidence is high, regulators tend to specify the outputs and take quantitatively informed preventive measures. However, when levels of confidence are lower, regulators may favour an inflection toward more qualitative considerations of risks to inform resilience building and absorption of adverse consequences. As part of an ongoing research project designed to explore the potentialities of developing a holistic framework for risk assessment which blends qualitative and quantitative methods, this article maps out the key challenges involved in evaluation and decision-making within risk regulatory bodies. In defining the problems and issues faced both by organizations in general and practitioners involved in everyday assessment and management of risk, we have developed a heuristic designed to assist in understanding, categorising and evaluating risk. It is anticipated that the development of knowledge in this area can contribute toward progressive process modifications, improved decision-making at senior management level, and enhance risk management practices amongst regulatory agencies. The project involved semi-structured interviews with practitioners working in risk regulatory bodies from the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and New Zealand. In coalescing the findings of empirical studies, the sources of these challenges were discussed as being related to rational, technical and expert factors. The main areas of analysis focused on in this article revolve around the process of evaluation, organisational strategies, structural factors and expert perceptions.

摘要

风险监管过程对一系列机构、部门和行业至关重要。世界各地的监管机构在管理风险和不确定性方面面临着大量挑战。这些挑战的确切来源多种多样，但通常与预测和量化风险的信心程度有关。当置信度高时，监管机构倾向于指定输出并采取定量的知情预防措施。然而，当信心水平较低时，监管机构可能倾向于对风险进行更定性的考虑，以告知复原力建设和不利后果的吸收。作为一个正在进行的研究项目的一部分，该项目旨在探索开发一个融合了定性和定量方法的风险评估整体框架的潜力，本文阐述了风险监管机构内评估和决策所涉及的主要挑战。在定义一般组织和参与日常风险评估和管理的从业人员面临的问题和问题时，我们开发了一种启发式方法，旨在帮助理解、分类和评估风险。预计该领域知识的发展有助于逐步修改流程，改进高级管理层的决策，并加强监管机构之间的风险管理实践。该项目涉及对在英国、德国、法国、比利时、荷兰和新西兰的风险监管机构工作的从业人员进行半结构化访谈。在合并实证研究的结果时，这些挑战的来源被讨论为与理性、技术和专家因素有关。本文重点分析的主要领域围绕着评估过程、组织战略、结构因素和专家看法。