Strategic Risk Leadership

This casebook extends Strategic Risk Leadership: Engaging a World of Risk, Uncertainty and the Unknown, bringing theory and practice grounded in the first book to life with an array of applicable, real-world examples. The book enables critical thinking about the current state of risk management and ERM, demonstrating contemporary shortcomings and challenges from real-life cases drawn from a global selection of well-known organizations. It confronts modern risk management practices and discusses what leaders should do to deal with unpredictable environments. Providing a basis for developing more effective risk management approaches, the book identifies shortcomings of contemporary approaches to risk management and specifies how to deal with the major risks we face today, illuminated by a variety of comprehensive global examples. It also provides valuable insights on these approaches for managers and leaders in general—including risk executives and chief risk officers—as well as advanced risk management students. End-of-chapter cases illustrate both good and bad risk management approaches as useful inspiration for reflective risk leaders. This book will be a hugely valuable resource for those studying or teaching risk management.

Modern risk management as practiced today faces significant obstacles—we argue—primarily due to the fundamental premise of the concept itself. It asserts that we are mainly dealing with measurable, quantifiable risks and that we can manage the uncontrollable by relying on formal control-based systems, which has produced a general view that (enterprise) risk management is a technical-scientific discipline. Strategic Risk Leadership offers a critique of the status quo, and encourages leaders, executives, and chief risk officers to find fresh approaches that can help them deal more proactively with what the future may hold. The book provides an overview of the history of risk management and current risk governance approaches as prescribed by leading risk management standards, such as COSO and ISO31000. This enables practitioners to challenge the frameworks and improve their adoption in practice introducing sustainable resilience as a (more) meaningful response to uncertain and unknowable conditions. The book shows how traditional thinking downplays the significance of human behavior and judgmental biases as key elements of major organizational exposures illustrated and explained through numerous case examples and studies. This book is essential reading for strategic risk managers to understand the requirements for effective risk governance practices in the contemporary and rapidly changing global risk landscape. Indeed, it is a valuable resource for all risk executives, leaders, and chief risk officers, as well as advanced students of risk management.

We as humans are prone to a variety of wired-in cognitive mistakes in the way we interpret and react to risk-related information. This is highly consequential since the cognitive biases managers are exposed to in their day-to-day business erode the objectivity of their risk-related decisions, which ultimately hurts the financial well-being of their firms. This book seeks to develop risk literacy as a leadership skill. It helps managers develop the skills to improve managerial decision-making in regards to managing risk. The last decades have offered various insights into how human nature often gets in the way of rational decision-making. This book is a valuable resource for insurance executives, chief risk officers, company leaders, and graduate students of risk management and risk psychology. It is the first behavioral risk management guide for managers and other interested readers - using examples from economic theory, behavioral finance, and game theory, it studies the hidden forces that drive our decision-making processes under risk. .

This book presents a new approach to risk management that enables executives to think systematically and strategically about future risks and deal proactively with threats to their competitive advantages in an ever more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. Organizations typically manage risks through traditional tools such as insurance and risk mitigation; some employ enterprise risk management, which looks at risk holistically throughout the organization. But these tools tend to focus organizational attention on past actions and compliance. Executives need to tackle risk head-on as an integral part of their strategic planning process, not by looking in the rearview mirror. Strategic Risk Management (SRM) is a forward-looking approach that helps teams anticipate events or exposures that fundamentally threaten or enhance a firm's position. The authors, experts in both business strategy and risk management, define strategic risks and show how they differ from operational risks. They offer a road map that describes architectural elements of SRM (knowledge, principles, structures, and tools) to show how leaders can integrate them to effectively design and implement a future-facing SRM program. SRM gives organizations a competitive advantage over those stuck in outdated risk management practices. For the first time, it enables them to look squarely out the front windshield.

This book promotes good risk governance and risk management practices to corporate managers, executives, and directors wherever they operate around the world. The major corporate scandals have their roots in governance failure pointing to the link between risk governance and good performance outcomes. This topic is timely and of interest both to the academic community as well as to practicing managers, executives, and directors. The volume focuses on contemporary risk leadership issues based on recent research insights but avoids excessive technical language and mathematical formulas. The book is framed around the challenges imposed on executives and directors in dealing with an increasingly complex and unpredictable world. This requires a new risk leadership focus that not only avoids the downside risks but also considers ways to exploit the upside potential offered by a dynamic environment. The underlying logic is built on the principles of financial economics where benefits derive from reducing bankruptcy costs and increasing future cash inflows. This provides a stringent framework for analyzing the effect of different risk management actions and behaviors in effective risk-taking organizations. Hence, the book addresses the potential for upside gains as much as the threats of downside losses that represent the conventional risk perspectives. It states the simple fact that you must be willing to take risk to increase strategic responsiveness and corporate manoeuverability. The text builds the arguments in logical steps explicating relevant techniques and practices along the way that invite to immediate applications and practical thinking

Public Sector Leadership in Assessing and Addressing Risk explores risk management in practice, focusing on the identification of risks in the European public sector while contextualising its Eurocentric analysis within a global setting; it lays the groundwork for understanding the main philosophical premises of risk management.

"Strategic Risk: A Guide for Directors presents a challenging new approach to risk management known as STRATrisk, which helps enterprises to focus on the outcomes that really matter. The authors state that strategic risks differ from tactical risks, not just in magnitude but also in their nature - even though they often arise from project or operational risks; that is because the really big risks are more dynamic, uncertain and interconnected." "This guide has been produced by collaboration between the civil engineering and actuarial professions, and shows why managing strategic risk needs a different approach; outlines a recommended methodology; stresses the necessity for the board to provide risk leadership and create the right culture, internal communications systems and risk-management frameworks; and discusses how to proceed in practice and outlines constructive tools."--BOOK JACKET.

The modern business climate demands a new risk management strategy Mastering Strategic Risk: A Framework for Leading and Transforming Organizations is a comprehensive guide to redesigning organizational systems to better manage the risks and complexities of the modern world. Based on the notion of "Create, Facilitate, and Support," the book provides a roadmap to ensuring optimum performance in even the most challenging circumstances. Whether applied to a system or an entire organization, the ideas presented can help unlock a business's potential and ensure a sustainable advantage. Modern business leaders face unprecedented challenges, and risk management has become a strategic priority. Traditional management frameworks are outdated, and cannot be re-tooled to effectively account for the demands and complexities of the 21st century. Instead of adjusting old, ineffective models, businesses are better served by implementing an entirely new model custom-built to lead organizations through today's business environment. Mastering Strategic Risk describes this brand new framework, and provides the tools and background leaders need to remain effective in this new age. Topics include: The three forces behind customer behavior, competitive advantage, and a culture of discipline New major change agents that drive complexity and intensity Tools that help identify and mitigate the biggest risks to operations A new HR model to drive peak performance and galvanize employees The book contains well-known real-world examples from Wachovia, Toyota, World-Com, and Citrix, that illustrate key concepts within the new framework and demonstrate the core elements of modern risk management. For the savvy leader looking to push an organization to the next level, Mastering Strategic Risk: A Framework for Leading and Transforming Organizations provides a brand new model for effective management.