مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد پویایی مدیریت (غیر) یکپارچه ریسک – الزویر ۲۰۱۷

Drawing on a comparative case study of enterprise risk management, and building on the literature on boundary objects, this study sheds light on the ‘dynamics of (dis)integrated risk management’. Our analysis of enterprise risk management in two large organisations reveals a set of pressures that undermine the ideals of enterprise risk management mobilised by practitioners and their promise for ‘integrated’ control practices. While the two cases show how enterprise risk management is shaped in different forms, in both cases the attempt to create a shared context for the identification and communication of enterprise-wide risks makes visible and active residual elements that contribute to generate dissatisfaction and calls for change to integrated risk management. The discussion of the dynamics of (dis)integrated risk management contributes to extending research that is critical of procedural forms of enterprise risk management, as well as recent work that draws attention to the role of ‘risk talk’ in enterprise risk management. We also suggest that our study of enterprise risk management sheds light on some key tensions of infrastructure formation, thus contributing to recent theory-building research that draws attention to the accretion of processes, roles, and governance structures into an infrastructure that enables the production of accounts of performance.

Introduction

Since the early 2000s, enterprise risk management has attracted increasing attention as an approach to the management of risk that is ‘integrated’, providing in aspiration a unitary and holistic view of the risks that an organisation as a whole is facing1 (COSO, 2004; Hayne & Free, 2014; Power, 2007). Normative practitioner texts describe enterprise risk management as a process that is ‘integrated with all other aspects of the business’ (COSO, 2016: 4) and contributes to ‘a systematic and integrated approach to the management of the total risks that a company faces’ (Dickinson, 2001: 360). A growing body of field-based studies challenges this promise of a unitary and systematic process (Arena, Arnaboldi, & Azzone, 2010; Jordan, Jørgensen, & Mitterhofer, 2013; Kaplan & Mikes, 2016; Mikes & Kaplan, 2013; Mikes, 2009, 2011; Palermo, 2014; Tekathen & Dechow, 2013). In contrast to many normative practitioner texts, enterprise risk management ‘in action’ is a collection of ideas, processes and tools that can be selectively used and assembled by internal organisational agents in search of areas to which they may contribute (Hall, Mikes, & Millo, 2015; Kaplan & Mikes, 2016; Mikes & Kaplan, 2013; Mikes, 2016). Building on the contrast between the promise of ‘integration’ of enterprise risk management and its multifaceted field-level manifestations, in this paper we seek to examine whether and how a heterogeneous mix of tools, processes and networks of actors can give rise to something that, even if only temporarily, becomes a seemingly stable and coherent working ensemble. Our analysis draws on, and seeks to develop, the literature on boundary objects (see, for a recent overview, Bowker, Timmermans, Clarke, & Balka, 2015). This literature draws attention to the way in which certain physical objects, processes, tools and even theories can act as ‘integrating devices’ (Carlile, 2002: 453) across organisational boundaries, contributing to form a ‘shared context’ among dispersed groups of actors.