Social risk management framework

Social risk management refers to how society manages risks (not to how to manage social risks), a conceptual framework introduced by Holzmann and Jorgensen (2000). See appendht A for a brief exposition. 

Social risk management. A framework that can be used to analyze the sources of vulnerability, how society manages risks, and the relative costs and benefits of various public interventions on household welfare. Risk management strategies include prevention, mitigation, and coping and may use government, for profit, or private informal mechanisms. 

Holzmann, Robert, and Steen Jorgensen. 2000. Social Risk Management A New Conceptual Framework for Social Protection and Beyond. Social Protection Discussion Paper 0006. Washington, DC World Bank. 

Risk assessment evaluates risk in terms of hazard and exposure, but reference to risk levels must account for different perceptions of risk as well as scientific uncertainties in risk assessment. In short, this research project considers the importance of social and institutional processes in influencing risk perceptions and risk acceptability. This book therefore takes a constrained relativist approach by incorporating risk perceptions in the research framework. An unconstrained relativist perspective would imply that no scientific study is reliable or robust. By contrast, a constrained relativist approach can provide a useful basis for examining the different social and cultural factors involved in regulatory risk management. 

Public policy decisions are necessarily made in a dynamic, even turbulent, social landscape that is continually changing. In the face of these perturbations, complex sociotechnical systems must be robust. Rasmussen (1997) developed an innovative framework for risk management to achieve this goal (Figure 3). 

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