A test of Rasmussen's risk management framework in the food safety domain: BSE in the UK

In 1986, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was identified in the UK. Millions of BSE-infected cows were slaughtered and over 150 people contracted variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, an inevitably fatal human form of BSE. Tragic incidents such as this provide valuable opportunities to understand and improve the safety of complex socio-technical systems. By studying accidents, knowledge can be gained that can improve system safety. The purpose of this article is to test the usefulness of Rasmussen's risk management framework for explaining how and why accidents occur in the food production domain. This was accomplished by using the framework to retrospectively investigate how and why BSE was transmitted through the human and animal food supply in the UK from 1986 to 1996. More specifically, an AcciMap and Conflict Map were constructed to represent contributing factors of the epidemic according to the structure of Rasmussen's framework. These factors were used to test the seven predictions made by the framework. All seven predictions were supported by the evidence, indicating that Rasmussen's risk management framework shows promise as a theoretically driven explanation of how and why accidents happen in complex socio-technical systems, particularly in the food production domain.     

The influence of process-oriented organisational design on operational performance and innovation: a quantitative analysis in the financial services industry

Market competition requires that organisations excel at both operational performance and innovation. Though process orientation is intended to benefit operations in general, the impact of specific elements remains unclear. The purpose of this study is to identify the specific organisational design components of process orientation that simultaneously influence operational performance and innovation. We survey employees in the financial services sector (N = 1069) regarding the influence of six process-oriented organisation design components on operational performance and innovation using PLS-SEM. The results indicate that organisational structure and process improvement encourage both operational performance and innovation. Personal autonomy is partially beneficial, while the others have no joint influence on operational performance and innovation. This study is first in providing evidence regarding the influence of a broad variety of organisational design components of process orientation on operational performance and innovation. The study contributes to theory on how process orientation improves operational performance and innovation. The findings can serve as a guideline for managers and organisations as to which organisational design components should be implemented to improve operations.     

Understanding risk compensation in children: Experience with the activity and level of sensation seeking play a role

The aims of this study were to determine if children 7–12 years show risk compensation when engaging in ecologically valid recreational sports tasks, and to explore how experience with the activity and extent of sensation seeking influence this. Children were positioned up on a platform, on a bike or wearing rollerblades, and they were presented varying heights and inclines from which they selected the greatest one they go down when wearing and not wearing safety gear appropriate to the activity; when making their ratings they anticipated actually doing the task. Results revealed that children engaged in significantly more risk taking when wearing safety gear, thereby demonstrating risk compensation, and this was significantly greater for the activity with which they had greater experience. However, children high in sensation seeking demonstrated significantly more risk compensation in both the high and low experience activities, although the injury risk appraisals that predicted risk compensation varied with experience level. Implications for the design of injury prevention programs and directions for future research are discussed.