**7. Knowledge management considering different disciplines**

only began to gain popularity in the mid‐1970s [17]. Slovic's approach known as the psychometric paradigm aims at the "quantitative description of the cognitive and evaluative mental structure of risk and its determinants" [18]. His research focuses on "what people mean when they say that something is (or is not) 'risky', and to determine what factors underlie those perceptions" [19]. It focuses on the beliefs laypersons hold with regard to how chemicals cause health risks. For instance, laypersons are less sensitive to dose‐response relationships compared to toxicologists suggesting that laypersons do not differentiate between the qualitative hazard and the quantitative risk, and therefore do not see risk as something that can be increased or reduced due to interventions or changes in exposure levels. This misconception is a continuing challenge in medical risk communication because most interventions, especially health promoting interventions, reduce but do not eliminate risks. Risk of an adverse event can generally only be reduced, but specific risks related to a certain hazard might be eliminated if the hazard is eliminated, though it may take some time. If you quit smoking, after 20 smokeless years, you will have vascular disease mortality comparable with never smokers [20], but like the rest of the population you still may die of vascular disease because

From the rational point of view, to evaluate a risk, you need to know something about the hazard, assess probabilities as well as consequences of the negative outcome. In fact, however, intuitive risk judgment has a strong affective component, and it is associated with moral concerns and may neglect any probability consideration in risk appraisal. Doing something about your personal risk depends on how you understand the risk. This is a subjective exercise including the compilation of the more objective information on hazard and risk in combination with individual assessments on severity of risk and potential side effects, and last but not

From the *sociological point* of view, probabilistic risk assessment alone is unsociological. Sociological understanding of risk needs additional social, cultural, and historical contexts. Sociology explains how risks are handled in a society and might thereby clarify potential public misperceptions of risk. When technically defined risks are not contextually generated, public risks understanding will be defined as wrong, if it differs from the factual experts' opinion. From the sociological point of view, it is an error not considering contextual factors like traditions, culture, norms, etc. even though that does not mean that the factual knowledge is wrong. The role of sociology, when it comes to risk, is to explain why errors in dealing with risk in a society occur but not the truth behind them. Implication of this perspective deals with risk communication. The factual knowledge about specific risks needs to be understood and communicated. Sociology emphasizes that when dealing with communication it is important to consider different segments of the public understanding of risks to avoid misperception. Sociological amplification of risk explains how risks and events or accidents interact with psychological, social, institutional, and cultural processes, and often increase or decrease risk perception, public concern, and thereby risk behavior. The objective risk assessment provides information about the risk, but for a sociologist the task is to analyze how this information is understood and reflected in practical social actions in the public. Risks and hazards are sociocultural events and they are not only neutral facts that generate specific signals. It should be considered that also an assessment of a risk can be seen as a construction of a risk and hazard. This implies for sociology to see and explain risk as an overall product of social and cultural processes [21].

of other hazards leading to the same adverse event.

258 Knowledge Management Strategies and Applications

least on personal values and preferences.

All risk concepts of the different disciplines have one element in common; the distinction between reality and uncertainty. **Figure 1** illustrates the tasks of the different disciplines in the process of risk management. Engineering and occupational health focuses on hazard and risk identification (explicit knowledge). Sociology looks at the risk on humans and society (social knowledge). Psychology works with risk perception and manages risk on a personal level (individual knowledge). The latter two disciplines rely on the first to identify and describe risk as objective as possible, and the former depend on the psychology and sociology to translate their observations and calculations into something usable for individuals and society. Therefore, it is essential that these disciplines keep their definition and taxonomy of risk knowledge. However, interaction and knowledge sharing is important for the overall risk management process.

The engineer tells the occupational hygienist technical details for the risk assessment; the occupational hygienist communicate risk assessment results to medicine to allow the best treatment for the exposed individual; the doctor needs to explain the information to the patient. Finally, the patient should perceive the risk in that manner to do the right action. Already for a straightforward treatment, a long chain of knowledge transfer needs to work. However, risk

**Figure 1.** Concepts of considered disciplines while defining risk.

assessment and management to reduce the risks is rarely straightforward, especially when scientific uncertainty and, at the same time, competing benefits and risks come into play. A recent example is management of potential risks related to the use of electronic cigarettes [22, 23], for which on the one hand, long‐term adverse health effects are expected, but on the other hand, electronic cigarettes are also expected to be safer than conventional cigarettes to facilitate to quit smoking. Public health researchers mainly request strict regulation to minimize potential future health effects and avoiding electronic cigarettes to become a new socially acceptable way of smoking, especially among youngsters, and thereby torpedoing the efforts for achieving a smoke‐free environment.

Therefore, it is very important to understand underlying terminology from different disciplines. But even more important is to understand their tasks and their views on the topic. For example, the role of sociology "to explain why errors occur but not the truth behind them" clarifies that communication is more important for the sociological perspective than the risk assessment procedure itself, even though both parts are necessary for the overall risk management. If these different views are not taken into account, conflicts and misunderstandings can happen.

In knowledge management, knowledge creation tools were often criticized. One critique is that most tools hide or eliminate important contextual information [24]. Furthermore, it could be shown that individual communication skills have more importance for perceived quality of risk knowledge sharing than the used technical systems [6]. Additionally, lack of time or awareness for the importance of sharing knowledge, missing communication skills, as well as differences in education and culture are seen as the most important barriers for interdisciplinary work [25]. In our opinion, collaborating researchers need to understand their used terms but also have to understand why there are differences. It is very important to know the terminology, tasks, and perspectives from different disciplines. Different terminology can be dealt with in a wiki development, a website that provides collaborative work on terminologies. However, further research is necessary on how to deal with different discipline‐related aims or perspectives in the process of risk management.

Most differences between the disciplines are dealing with risk assessment. All disciplines have the theoretical wish to estimate the real quantitative risk and all disciplines agree that this is difficult to achieve or sometimes not even possible. Disciplines typically using probabilistic approaches, such as engineering or occupational health, define risks mathematically and more objectively. Consequently, these disciplines emphasize the importance of external validity and standardized procedures. Observational research is often connected with a black box phenomenon and is sometimes evaluated as giving less support to evidence than experiments. The presentation of results is more complex and difficult to understand and to trust. Consequently, in these disciplines, problems in objectivity and communication are more obvious. The cognitive approach seen in psychology and social sciences focuses more on the perception of risk. They evaluate the understanding of different risk presentations and look into emotions and cognitive processes while collecting risk assessment information. Due to the fact that risk assessment is seen as less objective, risks are seen as expectations or predictions. However, all disciplines agree that risk assessment should be as objective as possible. To allow for this, evidence‐based information must be used to identify hazards and to assess dose‐response relationships, while exposure assessment should be based on documented, preferably quantitative, measurable, and representative data.
