Risk Management for Corporate Leaders

Contemporary organizations are exposed to complex and dynamic business contexts where events move quickly and sometimes unforeseeable change across international markets is a regular hazard. The ability to form global corporate structures across different countries and regions has economic benefits. However, tight multinational operations also leave themselves open to new... read moreunknown risks. This calls for academic rationales and practical experiences from effective risk management processes to better understand how to deal with strategic and operational exposures of global enterprise. As companies expand their international presence they get exposed to the turbulence of multinational markets. New technologies, innovation, and competitive moves change the market rules while political turmoil, natural disasters, and terrorism impose additional challenges on global operations that are beyond the control of corporate executives.

Changes in the competitive, technological, socio-economic and political conditions will magnify the strategic impact of operational failures. The resulting tensions, between loss avoidance and risk taking decisions, call for new ways of managing corporate exposures so as to eliminate excessive downside effects and exploit upside opportunities created by the changing market conditions. The formal enterprise risk management frameworks promote a structured approach to deal with the turbulence of global exposures. But, this approach can probably benefit from extended views on effective risk practices. Recent studies suggest that risk management capabilities can lead to positive performance outcomes and seem to be further enhanced by combinations of a multinational presence, investment in innovation and financial slack. This series on risk management for corporate leaders seeks to understand how this can be accomplished. A select number of experts have been assembled to provide insights and diverse perspectives about effective handling of risk in volatile and unpredictable environments.