Inside companies that produce significant risks, risk managers play a key role. They manage the connection between the risk regulation regime, which stresses public values, and the company, which pursues a broader array of organisational goals. This makes the role of risk managers ambivalent. To better understand this ambivalence and identify the means, motives and strategies that risk managers employ in response to this ambivalence, this article conducts a concise review of (classic) organisation and regulatory literature. Based on this review, we propose a typology that distinguishes four roles of risk managers: risk managers as supporting staff; risk managers as professionals; risk managers as boundary spanners; and risk managers as agents in regulatory communities. Each type subsequently describes how risk managers employ different strategies in their attempt to connect the risk regulation regime and the company, ie translating policies to practices, tailoring policies to practices, explaining and framing policies and practices, and (re)interpreting policies and practices together with regulators. The typology enables researchers and practioners to emphasise and more thoroughly analyse the variety and complexity of risk managers’ work, and can help regulators to broaden and fine-tune their strategies to improve connections with the various roles of risk managers.
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The promise of big data in the field of mobility is great, for example for mobility-as-a-service solutions. Having a better sense of the existing flows over the network would allow for much improved modelling of future flows and nudging users into behaviours targeting collectively better outcomes. Because of this promise the interest that cities have in big data for mobility is high. They are looking for ways in which a mobility data platform gathers the relevant data, allow for advanced modelling of current and future network states, and ways to drive travel behaviour. We participated in the EU funded PETRA project that built such a platform for the cities of Haifa, Rome and Venice. In this paper, we are looking for key governance mechanisms that affect the success of mobility data platforms, and how they are related to technical features. The project and an additional study into 10 cases revealed that the more ambitious a platform is on a technical level, the more governance challenges they will encounter, thus the more advanced governance arrangements are necessary. However, many governance arrangements are a given rather than a subject to design. This implies that for success, the technical ambition of the platform should be aligned with the institutions of the city in which the platforms will be implemented. ... Read more

This document represents business model overview for PETRA. The business model is an integral part of the governance handbook, (D7.3), but is also listed as a separate deliverable. For all details, please refer to deliverable 7.3. Here an abbreviated version is presented.
The model uses a business model canvas to look at the main revenue and costs streams, risks and assumptions.
The business model is based on information that was gathered from the demonstrators and literature.
On the revenue side of the business model, the context and policies in place very much drive the expected revenues. Rather than providing an expected outcome, the model proposed existing and well developed approaches to estimate possible revenues, given a specific context. ... Read more

This document represents the governance handbook on mobility data platforms for the PETRA project. The governance handbook provides metropolitan authorities contemplating the implementation of a mobility data platform in line with the PETRA project about governance issues and design.
The analysis has shown mobility data platforms with the reach of PETRA are not available, however a variety of solutions of both the platform and the app exist in various situations. Of those, 13 were analyses to understand how governance shapes the solutions implemented and what the solutions implemented need from governance. The results do not provide a single best solution of governance for three reasons. First, mobility data platforms will land in a variety of (governance) contexts. Assuming that authorities would be willing to fully adjust their governance for the implementation of a mobility data platform is naïve. Second, mobility data platforms can come in a variety of forms. The governance has to align with the particular implementation. Third, governance solutions consist of a great deal of element that not necessarily always act uniformly, and as such, not always act predictably in various contexts. Because of that variability the handbook highlights key mechanisms that authorities working on the governance of a mobility data platform should take in to account, rather than provide a theoretical and unrealistic single optimal governance design. The report adapts a column structure to align with this focus on specific mechanisms to take into account. It also provides specific readers with a planned route through the different columns.
The governance handbook was developed based on the analysis of 13 case studies and the three demonstrators. The provided the input to understand the relation between the specific implementation of a mobility data platform and a governance context. Desk research and interviews provided the understanding of those cases, the types of data input, the function of the platform in terms of data linking, capture, retention, storage, aggregation, and modelling, the data output and a possible mobile application. The key question in the cases was to understand organisational links of the stakeholders providing the data and using the data, and the links to the stakeholders with an interest in the various functionalities of the platform in terms of data handling. From these links we could further understand how decision-making on the platform was structured and what outcomes of that decision-making could be expected.
The report starts with an instruction on the overall project, followed by a prologue, that sets the scene. This is followed by a number of theoretical columns, highlighting understood mechanisms from organisational science and public administration that showed to be relevant in the cases and demonstrators. After these, empirical columns highlight mechanisms that were recognised in the cases studied, and that illustrate the complex and varied contexts of mobility data platforms and how to align the governance to specific goals. Finally, five syntheses are given, including a business case, a set of models, and different governance design routes. ... Read more

Network companies fulfill a critical role in the energy transition. The is article provides an empirical study of this role of a Dutch national gas network company connecting a biogas producer. This project requires choices about many intertwined technical and institutional variables. Choices involve multiple, potentially competing public values like safety, cost-efficiency, sustainability and non-discrimination. A formal governance structure provides generic guidelines for network companies about how to act in the public interest, but we argue that unclarity remains on how to trade-off public values. In these instances, a network company seeks legitimacy for the choices that are made. Via an in-depth case study on the injection of biogas we explored how a network company interpreted its public role and how public value trade-off s were made. We conclude that legitimacy is sought and found in a mixture of formal and informal ways both inside the network company as well as outside. Although the governance regime allowed the network company to take a leading role in the innovative project, it failed as a starting point to claim legitimacy. These findings provide food for thought on how to institutionally embed the role of network companies in the energy transition. ... Read more

Risk management policies and methods are increasingly prescribed by regulators. This fits at least two developments over the past decades. First, public regulators and enforcers increasingly base their efforts on their own risk assessments. Second, public regulators increasingly rely on self-regulation, shifting responsibilities to regulate risks to companies whose operations are risky in the first place. These developments make the role of risk managers all the more important for the effectiveness of regulatory policies that seek to mitigate risks for society. Risk managers have a unique position in between regulators and enforcers on the one side and company operations on the other. This paper reviews how this linking-pin role of risk managers is perceived in organization and regulation literatures. Four different roles of risk managers are distinguished: - Risk managers as technostructure, translating regulatory policies into standards for operations; - Risk managers as ‘street level- bureaucrats’, coping with a variety of regulatory policies on the one hand and operational complexities on the other hand; - Risk managers as boundary spanners or gatekeepers, explaining and framing practices towards regulatory policies; and - Risk managers as agents of regulatory communities, (re)interpreting policies and practices with regulators and operators. All roles assume different motives, means and positions towards the regulator. The results of an empirical study on risk managers in three Dutch sectors provides illustrations of these roles in the day-to-day organizational reality. Of course real-life risk managers are hard to categorize. It will be concluded that risk managers play multiple roles simultaneously. However, preliminary findings also indicate that some roles may mix quite well, while some prove outright contradictory. Further empirical work should focus on the way risk managers combine the various and the consequences for the effectiveness of regulation. ... Read more

In view of the importance of risk management in regulation, this article focuses on a vital but still underexposed element in regulatory governance studies: the role of risk managers and their influence on regulatory effectiveness. Risk managers occupy a unique position between regulation and operation.This paper provides an overview of how this linking-pin role of risk managers is perceived according to classic organization and regulation literatures. Literature and empirical research reveal four roles of risk managers: risk managers as supporting staff, risk managers as professionals, risk managers as boundary spanners, and risk managers as agents in regulatory communities.Each type of risk manager has his own strategies to manage the coupling, i.e. translating policies to practices, tailoring policies to practices, explaining and framing policies and practices, and joint (re)interpretation of policies and practices. The results of an empirical study on risk managers in two Dutch sectors illustrates these roles play a role in ordinary life. ... Read more