This book by Barbara Czarniawska about the study of organising in the face of risk and threat reveals a change in organisation theory from focusing on formal structures to examining collective actions connected by perceived necessity within an institutional order (action nets). Modern risk society is characterised by risks created by the knowledge and technological mastery intended to control nature.

There is a significant disconnect between formal preparedness and actual crisis response. While formal organisations often focus on a punitive allocation of responsibility and convoluted bureaucratic prescriptions, effective organising during catastrophes frequently requires action precedence. This state involves loosening formal rules, using shortcuts, and relying on spontaneous action nets of volunteers and local actors who prioritise what must be done over who is responsible. Ultimately, risk management has expanded into a global professionalised field, yet it often remains a tool for reputation management and auditing rather than a guarantee of safety.

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1. Theoretical Framework: The Action Net Approach

The research program "Organizing in Action Nets" (OAN) posits that management should be studied as the construction and reconstruction of collective actions rather than the management of formal entities.

From Actors to Actions

• The Primacy of Action: Traditional institutional analysis begins with actors (producers, consumers, organisations). The action net approach argues that these identities are the results of organising, not its premises.
• Linguistic Precedence: The verb precedes the noun; the act of consuming or supplying repeatedly is what eventually defines an entity as a consumer or supplier.
• Persistence: An action net can continue to exist even when specific actors are disassembled or replaced. For instance, people continue to invest and buy insurance even when major financial macro-actors are swept away by crises.

Action Nets vs. Actor-Networks

• Wider Scope: While actor-network theory focuses on the association of actants to speak in one voice, action nets can exist without ever forming a formal network or a singular actor.
• Actual vs. Virtual: Action nets encompass both face-to-face contacts (actual) and symbolic or digital frames of reference (virtual/symbolic).

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2. The Evolution of Risk in Modern Society

Risk is defined as a hazard actively assessed in relation to future possibilities. It is a concept unique to future-oriented societies seeking to colonise the future.

The Risk Society

• Self-Confrontation: In contemporary society, risks are the reflection of human actions and perfected mastery over nature. As Ulrich Beck has noted, sources of danger are now knowledge rather than ignorance.
• The Modern Project: The Enlightenment ideal suggests society can be designed rationally to tame the wild. Paradoxically, the technological rationalisations intended to create welfare also create the risk of infinite devastation (e.g., global climate change).
• Postmodern Mistrust: Postmodernity is characterised by a growing awareness that high economic welfare and technological expansion do not guarantee smooth functioning. This leads to a need for a new ethical awareness where actions are avoided in cases of doubt.

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3. The Paradoxes of Risk Management

Risk management has evolved from its origins in the 1950s insurance and space industries into a pervasive risk management of everything.

Operational and Reputational Risk

• Professionalisation: The rise of the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) can lead to scapegoating or the assumption by other managers that they no longer need to consider risk.
• Audit Culture: Risk management often functions as a version of auditing or insurance, focused on protecting an organisation's reputation rather than foreseeing all dangers.
• The Opportunity Cost: Attempts to minimise risk in all respects can lead organisations to miss opportunities associated with healthy risk-taking.

Responsibility vs. Efficiency

• The Blame Game: Public debates after catastrophes (e.g., the Swedish response to the 2004 tsunami) often focus on who should be punished rather than how to improve actions.
• Punitive Focus: Discussion of responsibility is often a way to meet the punitive aspects of the law in advance, which may have doubtful significance for the efficiency of the actual response.

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4. Organising During Catastrophes

Research into events such as Storm Gudrun and the Tjorn Bridge collapse, reveals that proper organising is often an obstacle during a crisis.

• Action Precedence: Effective organising in catastrophes occurs when the rules of normal organising are ignored. This involves distributed responsibility instead of a detailed division of tasks.
• Ephemeral Organizations: These are temporary structures capable of quick remedial input due to their familiarity with local situations and creativity. They are often dissolved once formal, bureaucratic organizations (like the Army) arrive and demand authorisation.
• The Role of Volunteers: In the case of Storm Gudrun, spontaneous actions by private individuals and companies performing tasks far beyond their competence were more crucial than formal organisational borders.
• Enactment: Crises often escalate because people do not understand the complex technologies they are working with. A crisis only crops up when someone reacts to the unexpected; until a new enactment of reality is formed, the crisis intensifies.

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5. Global vs. Local Preparedness: The Marburg Virus Case

The 2005 Marburg virus outbreak in Uige, Angola, serves as a critical example of the failure of knowledge transfer from developed to underdeveloped regions.

• Network of Networks: The World Health Organization (WHO) created the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) to rapidly identify and react to outbreaks.
• The Failure of Plans: Experts usually work far from the site of the outbreak. In Uige, the experts' plans were largely unsuccessful. A local action net was created to manage the threat but was subsequently destroyed by the intervention of international structures.
• Infrastructure Gaps: Global health initiatives often ignore the reality of the Third World" where hospitals lack basic supplies, roads are impassable, and police/military forces are unstable.

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6. Emerging Arenas of Risk

Virtual and Aesthetic Threats

Risk is not limited to physical safety but extends into the eye of the beholder.

• Art as Threat: Aesthetic expressions (e.g., the "Snow White and the Madness of Truth" exhibition) can build global action nets. In some cases, freedom of expression prevails; in others, the perceived threat to beliefs or ideals leads to the removal of the work.

Public-Private Tensions

• Vaccine Production: In planning for bird flu, the Swedish government explored public-private partnerships to build vaccine factories. However, the different aims of private pharmaceutical companies (profit) versus public administration (health) create inherent difficulties in cooperation.
• Welfare Shifts: Catastrophes can reveal gaps in state-guaranteed care, leading to the growth of private insurance markets and shifting the risk society mentality toward individual or employer-led responsibility.