Abstract
This study investigates how employees of development and humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) form judgments about risks that may affect their organization, its process, activities and objectives. The thesis is based on a case study of Save the Children Norway (in Norwegian: Redd Barna), an international children’s rights organization. The purpose of this study is twofold: (a) to develop an understanding of the issues framed as organizational risks by NGO workers; and (b) to examine where these risk understandings might be rooted. Drawing on the relational theory of risk and the new institutionalism in organizational analysis, this thesis explores the possible linkages between perceptions of organizational risk and the operating context of development and humanitarian NGOs, or what has become known as the “aid industry.” This thesis demonstrates that the pursuit of organizational legitimacy is not only a driving force of NGO structure and behavior, but it also plays a role in shaping employees’ understandings of organizational risk.