The three chairs: How the leaders of risk standards committees influence decision-making and accountability

• Standards both prevent and contribute to accidents but empirical work is rare. • A detailed study of the views of three risk standard chairs from different sectors. • Shines a light on these influential but understudied experts. • Standards provide a framework for application of local knowledge. • The results challenge what it means to standardize. Standardization committees and their chairs sit at the center of standard development, and have influence over the standards’ scope, level of ambition, and framing. However, little is known about how the standard chairs themselves conceptualize and develop the standards. Situated in the literature on standardization and riskwork, we address what standard chairs see as the primary purpose of the standard for which they are responsible, how they conceptualize the usage of the standard, and the implications of their practice for risk management in general. We adopted a collated fieldwork approach, drawing together semi-structured interviews from two studies to look at the accounts of three standard chairs in Australia (AS 2885.6) and Norway (NORSOK Z-013 and NS 5814). We show how all chairs seek to influence the riskwork of direct users of the standards and senior managers. The chairs also emphasize the importance of expert judgement and reflecting on the inherent uncertainty in risk analyses. Chairs view the standards as frameworks rather than prescriptive methods. A good standard thus enables expert judgement, management decision making, and local adaptations while also establishing a rigorous process in risk management. This has implications for selection of standard chairs and for theoretical considerations of what it means to standardize.