Year of Award

2012

Document Type

Professional Paper

Degree Type

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Name

Communication Studies

Department or School/College

Department of Communication Studies

Committee Chair

Greg Larson

Commitee Members

Robin Saha, Steve Schwarze

Keywords

best practices, clean-up, cultural rationality, decision-making, deliberation, environmental management, remediation, technical rationality, tensions

Abstract

Drawing from qualitative data gathered from environmental management professionals, this paper describes best practices for decision-making in environmental clean-up. Technical experts are knowledgeable about both cultural and technical rationality and employ both, as appropriate, to achieve more robust decisions. Experts use active, passive, and interactive communicative strategies to reduce uncertainties and manage tensions. Deliberation is used to achieve robust decisions. The analysis suggests that organizations can improve acceptability of decisions by authorizing experts to incorporate cultural rationality early in the decision process.

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© Copyright 2012 Cassandra J. Hemphill