The strong power of standards in the safety and risk fields: A threat to proper developments of these fields?

Standards like ISO 31000 on risk management are increasingly influencing the risk and safety fields, despite rather strong criticism concerning their quality. In this paper, we perform a thorough discussion of the application of standards in the risk and safety fields, using ISO 31000 as a case to illustrate the argumentation. The aim is to structure and summarise some key knowledge on the role of such standards in the progress and practice of...