**1. Introduction to risk management and communication**

Health, safety, and risk management systems are designed to establish and achieve occupational goals, serving as primary mechanisms to control risks in the workplace [1, 2]. Their effectiveness in preventing loss and harm, however, depends upon the execution of behaviors necessitated by this overarching system. Despite the continued emphasis on the importance of organized action in risk management (RM) activities throughout the plan-do-check-act cycle, research suggests that implementation efforts often fail due to misinterpretation [1, 3, 4]. Although much effort has been dedicated to the behavioral aspects of RM primarily in the form of leadership/ communication theories [5–10], organizational climate theories [8, 11–13], and knowledge/motivation theories [14–16], as a discipline we lack a framework that provides relevant information

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

around RM practices including workplace risk identification, perception, and mitigation. As a result, cognitive, motivational, and social coordinative components in the workplace cease to evolve [17]. Mainly, because all employees are responsible for executing strategic health and safety (H&S) goals, it is challenging to track, troubleshoot, and control the entire system across managers, workers, shifts, job processes, and changing hazards [18–21]. Also, little theoretical work has been postulated to help understand the process by which risk practices are behaviorally executed throughout a continuous risk cycle [20, 22, 23].

personal safety and based on that perceived threat, how to respond [33]. Risks are best managed through consistent dialog between employees and managers [34, 35], and engaging employees in ongoing risk response and monitoring in order to build knowledge, awareness, and motivation of workers [36]. Communication is often noted as a basic component of RM, but several barriers exist that hinder risk communication between two entities within an organization.

Using Sensemaking Theory to Improve Risk Management and Risk Communication: What Can…

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.75725

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Several barriers exist that hinder communicating about and executing risk practices to prevent incidents. One barrier is the varying levels of risk perception that individuals have and the potential for them to misjudge the potential severity of those hazards [37]. Reason [38] argues that "the inability of individuals being able to recognize and respect the full extent of operational hazards can lead to the creation of more and longer-lasting holes in the defensive layers" (p. 82). For example, previous research has pointed toward optimistic bias and overconfidence as a challenge in identifying and preventing incidents on site [39, 40]. Specifically, individuals in both occupational and recreational settings commonly discuss a low perceived likelihood that something bad will happen to them as a result of a hazard or risk in their space [41].

Another barrier is that everyone has responsibility throughout the RM cycle and, because an individual's or group's practices may be aligned with one phase of RM, it can be difficult for each person to understand how their role and decisions fit into the process. If such compartmentalization occurs, it is more likely that individuals cognitively interpret hazards and risks in a vacuum. For each individual to be clear about what actions are acceptable and unacceptable in preventing incidents [42], risk communication must be understood and responded to

Last, even if individuals possess a sense of personal responsibility to mitigate risks and feel comfortable expressing concerns, the communication they receive about such risks must be perceived as important to respond efficiently and safely [44]. Without shared cognition and communication about these experiences, individuals are more likely to only observe bits and pieces of risk management with no reference as to how it "works" and fits into a more proactive process.

Sensemaking has been applied as a communication tool and organizing framework to examine threats, risks, and hazards in the context of the healthcare industry [45–47], nuclear power plants [48], organizational crises and disaster response [49, 50], and gaps in organizational leadership [51]. Retrospective root cause analyses have also been framed to facilitate sensemaking within organizations in regard to RM activities [52]. Sensemaking is a process that can improve interpersonal communication when people must make decisions during extreme events and has been used to mitigate organizational crises [53]. To date, sensemaking has yet to be theoretically integrated into the RM cycle and remains absent in the literature that dis-

appropriately at all levels within an organization [43].

cusses dynamic workplace contexts [45, 53].

**3. Incorporating sensemaking into risk management**

**2.2. Barriers that inhibit communication throughout the risk management cycle**

The purpose of this chapter is to build upon an existing framework—sensemaking theory—to enhance the risk communication surrounding cognitive and motivational fundamentals of H&S behavior. This chapter makes one of the first attempts to formally integrate sensemaking theory with the cyclical RM process and thereby more formally explains the theoretical processes that link organizational health and safety management systems theory with behavior-based systems theory. We intentionally design the argument and theoretical application to be generalizable across high-risk occupations, and as a result, avoid contextualizing this framework using industry-specific examples. Thus, the goal of this chapter is to provide a model that can be adapted to integrate sensemaking and the accompanying organizational and communicative components needed to facilitate risk management within any high-risk organization to identify and mitigate hazards.
