GSBS Risk & Governance Research Group: Professorial Lecture

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has used the analogy of the doomsday clock to indicate how close the world is to an existential threat. The clock has been used as an analogy (and a warning) since 1947 and yet we still persist in activities that move the minute hand ever closer to midnight. The processes by which we ignore hazards and minimise both the perceived probability and consequences associated with them has been a factor in a number of organisational crises. This presentation is concerned with an examination of the ways in which crises become incubated within organisations and how the managers invariably ignore the warnings that are present about the potential for failure. The argument is that managers become the authors of their own misfortune and generate the very conditions of crisis that they will subsequently have to manage - the clock is invariably ticking!

Professor Denis Fischbacher-Smith holds the research chair in risk and resilience at the University of Glasgow and is also a visiting professor at GCU. He holds a PhD in Science and Technology Policy from the University of Manchester in the role of risk analysis in decision making and a DLitt from the University of Glasgow in Crisis Management.

Come join us. Drinks and nibbles will follow the lecture!