On the interconnected nature of risk and responsibility in the research and development of new and emerging technologies

Abstract

AbstractRisk analysis of new and emerging technologies requires innovative approaches that are agile, exploratory, and can accommodate broad stakeholder engagement and perspectives. Existing theories of risk governance and responsible innovation suggest that operationalizing guiding principles for engagement such as inclusion and reflection may provide a useful approach to the risk analysis of these technologies. Yet, methodologies to systematically assess how we might operationalize such guiding principles in risk analysis are limited in existing risk research. We contribute to filling this gap by demonstrating a practical methodology for examining and documenting how research and development (R&D) professionals operationalize inclusion and reflection in risk analysis and what value this provides to risk analysis in the R&D context. We use the Australian nanotechnology R&D sector as our case study, interviewing 28 experts to examine how R&D professionals have operationalized inclusion and reflection into their risk analysis practices, generating three findings. First, we describe how our research design enables the successful translation of theory into a methodology that supports an empirical assessment of the integration of these guiding principles into risk analysis practice. Second, we argue that successfully and systematically integrating inclusion and reflection in risk analysis fosters a wider understanding and identification of risk through the activation of multi‐actor and multi‐institutional stakeholder engagement processes. Third, we outline how this research depicts the outward‐facing and introspective nature of risk analysis.