Decision Making Under Risk in Organisations: The Case of German Waste Management by Eckard Kamper

Author:Eckard Kamper [Kamper, Eckard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, General, Social Science
ISBN: 9781351730075
Google: MvhKDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 38506198
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

4.3.4 Legitimacy and Trust

A final argument can be made with respect to the problem of public acceptability of the decision about a waste treatment plant in the region. The problematic acceptance of such decisions in Germany has mainly been ascribed to weaknesses in the formal administrative decision making procedures, like the planning permission procedure (cf. e.g. Gusy 1990). This critique has been one reason for the efforts to establish more informal possibilities for citizens' participation, including mediation and planning cells. The expectation is that these forms of participation allow for a fair consideration of the preferences and interests of citizens affected by the respective decision.

However, in chapter three (cf. 3.3.1), I argued that for example the problems of the planning permission procedure can be explained more fundamentally by the time-orientation of complex planning decisions. These decisions are goal-programmed decisions, i.e., the knowledge whether they are correct, whether they reach the prescribed goal, will only be known in the future. This is a fundamental difference to decisions programmed on a conditional basis. Whether the rule if-then has been correctly performed can be observed when the decision takes place. A formalised procedure can report this correct fulfilment of the norm because the criteria for the correctness of the decision are already known. This allows a legitimisation by procedure (Luhmann 1983). These conditions are not given with decisions programmed towards the reaching of a goal. This is the reason why formalised administrative procedures normally fail to ensure the legitimacy of complex planning decisions: whether the decision is correct, can only be known in the future and not during a preceding procedure.

With respect to the citizens' participation in the Nordschwarzwald, this is an important argument, because the aim was to legitimise a risky decision by a procedure (Renn/Webler 1994). The goal was to improve the perceived shortcomings of formal procedures. Mainly, the participation should take place earlier in order to exert influence in the moment of the real decision, and the participation takes place with the help of a neutral mediating institution that ensures the fair participation of the citizens. However, such a conception of a preceding participation runs into the same problems of time-orientation as formal administrative procedures.

The literature on organisational decision making suggests another possibility for organisations to ensure the acceptability of their decisions. If it is not possible to create legitimacy for each single decision, the organisation has to establish a general trust of its environment in the rationality of its decisions (Luhmann 1964: 111). This trust can be established by the formal structure of the organisation, demonstrating rationality (Luhmann 1964: 112; Meyer/Rowan 1977). With special reference to conflicts about risky technologies, Brian Wynne (1987) has pointed to other possibilities to establish a background of trust in contested decisions. According to Wynnes suggestions, trust in an organisation's decisions can be created by fair decision making procedures, by open access to relevant information for the public, and by high performance in risk issues in the past.

With the help of these hints we

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