Chapter 9 : Systemic Risks and Organizational Challenges in Transformative Processes: ‘Cybersecurity’ in the Food Field

This contribution shows how ‘grand transformations’ – often framed as (technical) solutions to ‘grand challenges’ – can cause (follow-up) systemic risks, using digital transformation causing cybersecurity risks in the food field as an example. Drawing upon reviews of organization, risk, labor, science and technology and communication literature, it discusses how organizations can shape and cope with the complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and rippling effects of systemic risks and overall transformations. In particular, it illustrates how problem solving extends to several levels – technical-organizational structures, socio-technical interactions as well as all actors and their communication with each other need to be considered. Thus, not only questions about interfaces and inter-organizational structures but also the process level – and hence the ‘risk work’ at the frontline – are central to the challenge of cybersecurity and other systemic risks. Developing a multi-disciplinary perspective on the complex relationship between risk, communication and organizing, the contribution calls to move beyond purely technical problem-solving towards more participatory architectures and distributed experimentation.