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Risk And A Form Of Linguistic Imperialism

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The term risk has been defined in so many ways by many scholars. The term ‘risk’ itself is very broad to interpret. However, risk is often defined as a threat and it usually brings negative impacts to a person or an organisation. Hansson (2005) claims that many attempts have been made to define risk in a single meaning and eliminate other definitions which are futile and a form of ‘linguistic imperialism’. Since there is no exact meaning of risk, people describe risk based on their own perceptions and purposes. Perminova et al. (2008) and the Association of Project Management (APM) define risk as an uncertain event and exclusively negative (APM, 2006). Ward and Chapman (2003) recommend that project risk management (PRM) is categorized as project uncertainty management. Nonetheless, the term ‘uncertainty’ again brings confusion as there is no single meaning that can successfully define it (Perminova et al., 2008). On the contrary, Kaplan and Garrick (1981) define risk according to public’s risk perception. There are three criteria suggested by the authors such as the failure of that particular event, its tendency as well as the impact of the failure. Although there have been countless struggles to picture risk in a proper way, it is best that the focus should be diverted to a more important issue which is how to manage risk instead of defining it as time may not be on our side. Apart from the confusing issue of defining what risk really means, authors find themselves very

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