ABSTRACT
We live, as commentators are fond of saying, in a “risk society” (Beck, 1992). In contemporary organizations, risk is increasingly prominent in the managerial lexicon. Practitioners routinely cite “risk management” as the appropriate frame for a wide range of organizational activities, using technical terms such as enterprise risk management, operational risk, and risk matrix – to name but a few. “Risk talk” now permeates organizations of all descriptions (Power, 2004), and a discourse has emerged that institutionalizes a highly convergent way of thinking about risk – as the probability of a harm, hazard, or danger of some kind that can be effectively managed by accurately assessing, and then taking action to reduce, the likelihood and/or magnitude of undesirable events (Hardy & Maguire, 2016). But is risk so straightforward? Our answer is “no,” and we draw upon the image of Janus to explain why. For the Romans, Janus was the god of transitions and time – of beginnings and endings and, hence, duality. He is usually depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions, representing the past and the future. Describing someone or something as “Janus-faced” implies they have two sharply contrasting aspects, where apparent positive qualities mask more negative features. We argue that risk is Janus-faced: powerful and seductive, but also complex and potentially deceptive. Moreover, risk has multiple Janus faces, which we describe below.
