fact sheets, briefings cascading information down through the organization, and direct communications with employees. If someone posed a question, it should be clear who they should ask.
Finally, we decided to create a system for tracking, monitoring, and evaluating our change communications. We needed to develop effective means for receiving feedback and determining if our communications were increasing trust; providing useful information; and affecting knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and intended behaviors.
A key component would be conversations with employees in face‐to‐face meetings, small group meetings, and open house sessions. The employees’ immediate team supervisor would lead face‐to‐face and small group meetings because employees typically viewed these leaders as the most trusted part of management. Additionally, from a strategic communications perspective, the more emotionally charged or technically complex an issue, the more important it is to communicate the information on a personal level.
The CEO accepted the strategic communications plan and its implementation met with outstanding success. Almost all employees stayed with the organization after the sale. They gave high marks to the communications during this period of change.
We grounded this successful strategic plan in the core concepts and definitions provided in this chapter. These core concepts and definitions helped us to recognize the scope, nature, and challenges of the situations we were facing and to employ best practices, principles, strategies, approaches, and tools.
2.2 Defining the Concept and Term Risk
The first term that needs defining is the term risk. Unfortunately, there is no consensus among scholars about how to define the term. The scientific literature on risk and risk communication has offered numerous, competing definitions.
According to the Oxford English dictionary, risk is “a situation involving exposure to danger.” Risk is inherent in virtually every action, even inaction.
A risk expresses the probability of an adverse outcome and uncertainty about its occurrence and/or magnitude.1 From the risks associated with crossing the street or eating at a restaurant to an earthquake, terrorist attack, or disease outbreak, individuals face degrees of risk each day.
A risk can have positive or negative consequences of varying magnitudes. However, as used in most health, safety, and environmental studies, the focus is typically on negative consequences. The term risk is defined as the probability of an adverse outcome. It is the probability that a potential situation will cause harm or damage to people, property, and /or the environment.
As noted by Covello and Merkhofer, risk is multi‐dimensional.2 At a minimum, the term risk includes two elements: the likelihood of something happening and the consequences if it happens. At a more complex level, risk is a measure of uncertainty. It involves the possibility of an adverse consequence or outcome, the probability of exposure to the occurrence, the timing of the occurrence, and the magnitude of adverse consequence or outcomes.
One source of potential confusion about the term risk is the difference between risk and hazard. The terms are often used interchangeably. However, from a technical point of view, they are different. In the literature on risk assessment, hazard is typically described as a source of risk. A hazard is a dangerous situation that could lead to loss or injury. The term hazard typically refers to a substance, action, or event that can cause loss, harm, or other adverse consequences.
By comparison, risk, from a technical perspective, refers to likelihood of loss, harm, or other adverse consequences from exposure to a hazard. This distinguishes risk from hazard.3 Risk is created by a hazard. For example, a toxic chemical that is a hazard to human health or an endangered species does not constitute a risk unless humans or endangered species are exposed to the hazard. However, a hazard – be it radioactive, chemical, biological, mechanical, or otherwise – can pose a wide variety of risks to the environment. Since no analysis can address all potential risks of a hazard, a key element in risk analysis is to explicitly identify the specific risk of concern.
The definitions provided above assume that risks and hazards have an objective existence. As a result, a primary goal of risk communication should be to transmit objective information to nonexperts who often see risks subjectively through a veil of emotions, culture, and subjective experiences.
Many social and behavioral scientists take a broader view of the term risk. They view the term as a social construct, an idea that has been created and accepted by society. According to this subjectivist view, what technical and nontechnical experts mean by the word risk is often radically different. For technical experts, risk means probability multiplied by magnitude. For nontechnical experts, risk means what technical experts mean by risk (i.e. probability time magnitude) plus numerous subjective emotional and perceptual factors, including trust, benefits, personal control, voluntariness, dread, and familiarity. These additional factors are sometimes called “outrage” factors,4 and they are seen as influential to how people respond to risks.
Social and behavioral scientists, such as Beck and Giddens, argue this broader view of risk as a social construct helps explain why risk has become the overarching obsession of the modern world and has become a focus point for modern fears and anxieties.5 Fears and anxieties about the potential dangers of global warming, nuclear power plants, genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology, and a host of other risks and threats transcend national and international boundaries. Transboundary risks and threats are hotly debated on global stages occupied by multiple sets of players competing for attention. The players include policymakers, scientists, experts, activist groups, government agencies, corporations, political parties, the traditional broadcast and print media, social media, and the public. According to Beck and Giddens, inequalities multiply as rich and powerful players offload risks and dangers to less fortunate players.
2.3 Defining the Concept and Term Risk Communication
Risk communication can be defined as the transfer and exchange of information among interested parties about the nature, magnitude, significance, or control of a risk.6 Information about risks can be communicated through a variety of channels, including, but not limited to, fact sheets, websites, webcasts, reports, texting, emails, social media postings, warning labels, billboards, bulletin boards, public meetings, and public hearings.
Modern understandings of risk and risk communication differ greatly from the past. For example, in ancient Mesopotamia, ca. 3200 BCE, there lived in the Tigris‐Euphrates valley a group called the Asipu. One of their primary functions was to serve as risk, high concern, and crisis communication consultants. Members of the Asipu could be consulted about any high concern issue. Example issues included the cause of a disease outbreak, the need for a declaration of war, an alliance with another state, a change in the economic system, the selection of a leader, a proposed marriage, a suitable building site, a legal ruling, or the guilt or innocence of an alleged criminal. The Asipu would identify the important dimensions of the problem, identify alternative actions, collect information on the issue and the likely outcomes of each alternative, and consult the best data. From their perspective, the best data were signs from the gods, which the priest‐like Asipu were especially qualified to interpret. The Asipu would then create a report with spaces empty
