By Dr Gav Schneider, Risk 2 Solution

The fallout after the gorilla’s death provides lessons in risk management

Traditional and social media channels have been flooded with the story of Harambe, a 17-year-old western lowland silverback gorilla, who was shot dead at Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden (Cincinnati Zoo) on 28 May 2016 after a four-year-old boy crawled through a barrier and fell into his enclosure.

In technical risk management terms, the zoo seems to have been in-line with best practice

According to Cincinnati Zoo’s annual report, 1.5 million visitors visited the park in 2014 to 2015 and the park has accommodated more than 1 million visitors over the past 6 years. Included in those numbers are hundreds of parents who visited the zoo with their children who didn’t end up in any of the animal enclosures.

According to WLWT-TV, this was the first breach at the zoo since its opening in 1978. There is no doubt the zoo identified this risk and managed it with secure (until now) enclosures. There is also little doubt that relevant signage and duty of care reminders would have been placed around the zoo and that staff assumed parents would manage their children and keep them safe.

Organisations need to put energy and effort into so called “black swan” events … that are unlikely but have immense consequences if they do occur

However, as we have seen in several cases (including Cecil the Lion) it does not seem to be the incident itself that brings the massive negative consequences but rather social media, based on the fact that the internet provides a platform for everyone to be a judge and jury.

This flags the massive shift required in the way we manage risk. If we look only at the financial losses to the zoo, their decision may seem logical and rational. 

Imagine they decided to tranquillise Harambe and the four-year-old boy died while they were waiting for the tranquillisers to take effect — what would have been the impact?

The true lesson regarding this issue lies in the need for organisations to put energy and effort into so called “black swan” events — ones that are unlikely but have immense consequences if they do occur. These events are often overlooked based only on the fact they are unlikely, leaving organisations unprepared for when they do.

The ethics of what is right and wrong tends to blur when the masses have a platform to pass judgment

Traditional risk management approaches try to allocate scores to things and then put associated resources to the highest ranking risk issues. In this case, a risk that was deemed managed actually occurred and the result was very negative.

Whether negligent or not, various social media commentators have held the mother accountable. It seems she has been held to account based not on what she did but for the apparently unapologetic and callous way she responded to the killing of Harambe.

This shows us risk management needs to consider the “human element” in a way we previously haven’t. The ethics of what is right and wrong tends to blur when the masses have a platform to pass judgment. There are many lessons to be taken from this incident, including the following considerations:

• Risk management and duty of care should be incorporated in a more cohesive, focusing on applying a 'BDA' approach (Before, During and After). 
• Social media backlash adds a new dimension to the way organisations should make, report and defend their decisions.
• Individuals can no longer purely blame the organisation they believe responsible based on negligence of breach of duty of care. Even if the individual shifts blame onto the organisation entirely and they are not held to account by the law, they will be held to account by the general public.  
• We have entered an era where system and process-based risk management needs to integrate human and emotive elements to account for emotional responses.
• Lastly — and unrelatedly — the question of why one story attracts massive public outcry and why another doesn’t raises ethical questions regarding the way we consume news, the way the media reports it and the upsides and downsides of social media.

In short, this is another case of how much work we still have to do — especially in the modern internet age — to proactively and ethically manage risk.

Note: This is an extract from Risk Management Today Vol 26 No 5, which was modified from an article originally published by the Ethics Centre.