A Risky Decision: Managing without Risk

Abstract

Jack Dowie first became interested in risk in the 1960s, as an economist looking at entrepreneurship as a possible source of economic growth. He concluded that most of the famous entrepreneurs were simply good decision-makers, not the great ‘risk-takers’ they were usually pictured as. His concern with the individual components of good decision-making—structural modelling, probability assessment, outcome valuation and optimisation—has since been pursued in the context of both horserace betting markets and health care decision-making. He sees ‘risk’ as a major obstacle to recognition of the different abilities needed in respect of these separate tasks. Having produced the Open University's course on ‘Risk’ in the late 1970s, he tried and almost succeeded in writing the current follow-up (‘Professional Judgement and Decision Making’) without using the word.