Surveillance and Audit as the Risk Management of Information Society

Abstract

This article aims to consider the mode of risk management, generalized in the form of surveillance and audit, in modern information society, from the points of view of reflexive modernization theory and Luhmann's theory of social systems. Both surveillance and audit are key concepts to describe and analyze two inseparably related actions, risk production and risk management, as essential constituents of information society.

Reflexive modernization theory recognizes enhancements of both risk production and risk management as the essential antinomy of today's society. Luhmann's theory of social systems regards the enhancement of risk production is inevitable and necessary for modern society which is constructed by functionally differentiated systems. Especially modern technology systems, represented by information systems, have double-sided functions, production of new risks by themselves and conditions for possibility of risk management simultaneously. It can be said that, both actions of surveillance and audit, related to such double-sided function of information systems, materialize the possibility of risk management in information society as the form of “complementary observation” (K. P. Japp) of social systems.