Risk Management - The Revealing Hand

Many believe that the recent emphasis on enterprise risk management function is misguided, especially after the failure of sophisticated quantitative risk models during the global financial crisis. The concern is that top-down risk management will inhibit innovation and entrepreneurial activities. We advocate, however, that risk management done well-identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks in a cost-efficient manner-allows firms to add value by taking on riskier projects and strategies. But risk management must overcome severe individual and organizational biases that prevent managers and employees from thinking deeply and analytically about their risk exposure. In the paper, we reason inductively, from seven case studies, to propose multiple ways for the corporate risk function to foster highly interactive and intrusive dialogues that surface and prioritize risks, help to allocate resources to mitigate them, and bring clarity to the value trade-offs and moral dilemmas that lurk in those decisions