Risky business: Socializing asbestos risk and the hybridization of accounting

Risk management has become a major focus of corporate strategy. The management of risk often results in hybrid forms of calculative practice and to the production of “novel metrics” to make the future both calculable and manageable (Miller et al., 2008, p. 962). This paper contributes to an understanding of how accounting is implicated in the socialization of risk by examining the corporate funding of asbestos liabilities. Recent changes to the funding of asbestos claims in Australia provide a unique institutional context to utilize Douglas and Wildavsky's (1982) cultural risk model to examine the evolution of a hybrid calculative technology to manage, mediate and facilitate the socialization of risk.

► Asbestos funding arrangements in Australia are analysed from a cultural risk perspective.
► Douglas and Wildavsky's (1982) institutional typologies provide the framework for analysis.
► The socialization of risk associated with asbestos liabilities is demonstrated.