Categorie archief: English

Risk Culture

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Under the Microscope Guidance for Boards

The Institute of Risk Management | 2012

Richard Anderson, Chairman of The Institute of Risk Management: “For over 25 years, the Institute of Risk Management has provided leadership and guidance to the emerging risk management profession with a unique combination of academic excellence and practical relevance. The Institute’s profile continues to grow internationally with heightened interest in the management of risk across government, public, and business domains.“

This board guidance on risk culture is our latest contribution to thought leadership in the field. Although essential, the continuing parade of organisational catastrophes (and some notable successes) demonstrates that frameworks, processes and standards for risk management are insufficient to ensure that organisations reliably manage their risks and meet their strategic objectives. What is missing is the behavioural element: why do individuals, groups and organisations behave the way they do, and how does this affect all aspects of the management of risk?

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The new Danish guide on Risk Leadership

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Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Jesper Hjort | May 2007

In January 2007, PRIMO Danmark launched its national guide on (public) risk management, Risikoledelse – En Kommunal Opgave. The guide was endorsed by the Danish Minister of Interior, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who wrote the first part of the preface to the guide.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen (source: Wikipedia)

Rasmussen: “Every day, local authority managers make decisions involving risks; that is, decisions involving significant uncertainty. It is important to note that these may be risks facing citizens, local communities or the local authority organisation itself.

Risk is simply a condition of life when the future is uncertain. To put it in another way: making important decisions on an uncertain foundation is also part of overall management. Executives can never be entirely certain about the foundations of their decisions. However, if entirely risk-proof decisions were possible, nothing would happen.

So, for executives, the whole secret is – in the words of Kierkegaard – to take upon one self this uncertainty. Executives in the public sector should, therefore, work systematically on minimizing the negative sides of risks and on maximising the positive sides.

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“Long history of corporate governance puts UK in the lead”

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Interview with Dr. Lynn Drennan, CEO of ALARM, about risk management

Jack Kruf | 2023 from original (Dutch) by Jos Moerkamp (2006)

Great Britain is the European example of well-developed risk management in the public sector. In a country where you can insure yourself against almost anything, governments and other public organisations appear to do a lot to eliminate and limit risks.

Dr. Lynn Drennan

ALARM (Association of Local Authority Risk Managers) has grown into a national public sector risk management forum with over 1,800 participating organisations— a conversation with Dr. Lynn Drennan, ALARM chief executive.

She has only been in office since August this year, but Lynn Drennan has been active in risk management for many years. She was affiliated with Glasgow Caledonian University, ‘the only university in Europe that offers a university degree in risk management,’ says Drennan. “And that since 1982. Many of our graduates now work as risk managers in the corporate world, for consultants such as Marsh and Aon and for public organisations.”

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The Power of Organizations

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A New Approach to Organizational Theory: How organizations developed in history, how they operate, and how research on them has evolved.

Heather A. Haveman | 2022

Organizations are all around us: government agencies, multinational corporations, social-movement organizations, religious congregations, scientific bodies, sports teams, and more. Immensely powerful, they shape all social, economic, political, and cultural life. They are critical for planning and coordinating every activity, from manufacturing cardboard boxes to synthesizing new drugs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To understand our world, we must understand organizations.

The Power of Organizations defines the features of organizations, examines how they operate, traces their rise throughout a millennium, and explains how research on organizations has evolved from the mid-nineteenth century to today.

Heather Haveman shows how almost all contemporary research on organizations fits into three general perspectives: demographic, relational, and cultural. She offers constructive criticism of existing research, showing how it can be remade to be both more interesting and influential. She examines how we can use existing theories to understand the changes wrought by digital technologies, and she argues that organizational scholars can and should alter the impact that organizations have on society, particularly societal and global inequality, formal politics, and environmental degradation.

The Power of Organizations demonstrates the benefits and dangers of these ubiquitous foundations of modern society.

Bibliography

Haveman, H. (2022). The Power of Organizations: A New Approach to Organizational Theory. Princeton University Press.

A Research Agenda for Governance

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Guy Peters, Jon Pierre, Eva Sørensen, Jacob Torfing* | 2022

This incisive Research Agenda for Governance, published by Edward Elgar Publishing**, draws together unique contributions from leading scholars to examine the two distinct models of governance: the traditional model, based on the state and exercise of control through law and bureaucracy, and an alternative model centred on the collaboration of public and private sector actors.

Introducing the essential principles and rationale of these alternative models of governance, both of which can be seen operating at all levels of government in democratic as well as non-democratic regimes, the chapters evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the two systems. Drawing conclusions from critical areas of inquiry, including multi-level governance, the nature of governance in democratic and authoritarian regimes, and digital innovations in governance, the book offers a richly detailed insight into the respective workings of the models of governing by control and by collaboration.

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If Mayors Ruled the World

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Benjamin R. Barber | 2013

The world’s nations seem paralysed by the challenges of our time—climate change, terrorism, poverty, and the trafficking of drugs, guns, and people. The problems are too big, entrenched, and divisive for the nation-state. Is the nation-state, once democracy’s best hope, dysfunctional and obsolete today? According to Benjamin R. Barber, author of this book, the answer is yes.

Barber asserts that cities, and the mayors that run them, offer the best new forces of good governance: “Why cities? Cities already occupy the commanding heights of the global economy. They are home to more than half of the world’s population, a proportion which will continue to grow.

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Simpler: The Future of Government

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Cass Sunstein | 2014

Governments everywhere are undergoing a quiet and profound revolution: they’re getting simpler, more cost-effective, and focused on improved outcomes, not politics. For four years, one of the leading lights of that revolution, Cass Sunstein, as President Obama’s “Regulatory Czar,” oversaw the brilliant and successful effort to give every American a better government.

For Americans, the future of government arrived in 2009. The government became simpler, smarter, and worked better. Cass Sunstein, America’s “regulatory czar” under President Barack Obama, was at the centre of it all. Drawing on state-of-the-art work in behavioural psychology and economics, Sunstein helped save the country more than $91 billion and an unknown number of lives.

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