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Poole College of Management
Enterprise Risk Management Initiative

Risk Identification and Assessment

May 1, 2012

Risks Associated with Product Development

With over 50 years of experience in advising companies on product development efforts, the authors of this Harvard Business Review article present six flawed assumptions that bring rise to risks associated with product development. Product development managers often follow conventional assumptions to execute their projects effectively and efficiently based on the belief that these lead to the most productive approach. But often, risks associated with product development rise due to fallacies in these assumptions causing major delays, glacial progress, and costly failures.
David Hughes

Nov 2, 2011

Interviewing as a Technique for Risk Identification

David Hughes, Assistant VP of ERM and Business Continuity Planning at Hospital Corporation of America, discusses the interviewing process the company employs to identify top strategic risks.

Nov 1, 2011

Proactively Managing External Relationship Risk

The focus on managing third-party risk is becoming prevalent in the current business environment as more organizations turn to external providers to gain access to needed services, reduce costs, or achieve other strategic advantages. While most executives recognize the importance of thinking through risks associated with delegating key tasks to external parties, several studies suggest the extent of vendor risk assessments is lacking and they fail to be adequately resilient in holding vendors to certain risk management standards. A thought paper by Crowe Horwath presents a process for managing third-party relationship risks by utilizing a risk landscape framework. They highlight three steps to implement a successful third party risk management program.

Aug 1, 2011

Avoiding Confirmation Bias in Decision Making

Executives today are becoming even more aware of the biases within their own mind that can prevent them from making the correct decisions. One of these major biases is confirmation bias, which is the phenomenon in which people throw away any evidence as irrelevant if it contradicts their initial notion of the situation. Increased awareness of the decision making process can help executives better evaluate situations when coming to a major decision. Confirmation bias is likely to be present in any risk identification and risk assessment task as new information comes to light that might contradict our preconceived notions about a risk event. This thought paper explores twelve questions to think through before jumping into the deep end and making a major decision with an unfounded assumption as its base.

Jul 1, 2011

Managing Social Media Risks

As organizations realize the potential of social media to positively benefit their marketing and advertising strategies, they are also aware of potential risks. In a white paper published by Crowe Howarth LLP, the authors outline sources from which social media risks can originate and provides a six-step approach that an organization can use to create an effective social media risk management strategy.

Jul 1, 2011

Managing Human Capital Risk

Though companies recognize the high impact of Human Capital Risk (HCR), many still have immature HCR management processes, if any. The Conference Board researched companies based in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific to evaluate current HCR management practices. Companies with Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) indicated better HCR maturity. The research in this article also highlights a need for HR and ERM executives to engage each other more to better understand risks associated with their human capital management.

Dec 1, 2010

A Four-Step Risk Approach to Strategy Execution

Organizations are seeing the value of adopting a risk-based approach to execute strategies in order to survive in a post-recession world. This approach enables managers to focus on opportunities in strategic plans, as well as minimizing the potential impact of threats. A recent article in the Journal of Business Strategy outlines four steps to execute a strategy using a risk-based approach.

Sep 30, 2010

Data Risk Management – Applying a Holistic Approach

Due to the increasing costs associated with protecting and maintaining data, a holistic approach to data risk management is becoming essential to organizations. A whitepaper published by IBM discusses the framework and practices involved in using a holistic approach for implementing data risk management programs across organizations.

Jul 1, 2010

How Did BP’s Risk Management Lead to Failure?

The news has been flooded with updates on the environmental impact of the BP oil spill on the gulf coast and the economic impact on businesses in the surrounding areas. Many are wondering: How could something like this happen? Why has it taken so long to fix? What was BP management thinking? The answers to these questions are centered on one element the financial world has been buzzing about since the financial crisis: risk management. This article points out the critical components of risk management that were absent at BP and compares them to the basic principles any company should employ to successfully manage risks.

Jun 11, 2010

Current State of the Internal Audit Profession and Risk Oversight

Discover PwC's 6th annual internal audit profession report, revealing insights from over 2,000 auditors across 50+ territories.