Learning from risk : facilitating organisational learning through enterprise risk management

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Modern business environments are characterized by rapid changes and organizations that areable to survive and to thrive in such environments must be able to adapt and respond to thisenvironmental change. Risk management is an activity that strives to continuously evaluateand deal with changes to the environment. Organisational learning is the capability oforganizations to evaluate stimuli from the environment, to interpret the signals and to learn.Organisational learning can thus be seen as the capability to adapt to environmental change.First the thesis considers the concepts of risk and risk management by looking at its historicaldevelopment as a discipline. The concept is situated in a broader societal perspective of therisk society in which the individual is expected to carry a much greater burden of risk, whereself-criticism is an inherent feature of life and risk management is essential for everyone.Current risk management practice has seen the establishment of enterprise-wide riskmanagement as an extension of traditional risk management practice, which seeks to manageall the risks facing the organization, but also to manage it in an integrated manner. Increasedregulation and policies, as a result of organizational failures such as Enron, has called fororganizations to better manage risk in order to establish more resilient organizations and toprotect shareholder value in an increasingly turbulent business environment. As a result wesee development of enterprise risk management frameworks and standards. Most of thesestandards and frameworks recommend similar risk management activities, such as objectiveand context setting; risk assessment (risk identification, analysis and evaluation); risktreatment or response determination; and risk communication, monitoring and reporting.Next the thesis considers some of the defining features of organizational learning, such as thedifferences between organizational learning and learning organizations, the individual andorganizational perspective on learning, and the role of the individual in organizationallearning. Selected organizational learning models are described that focus on scanning,interpreting and learning, and the aspects that have an impact on organizational learning,including organizational memory and mental models, organizational culture, uncertainty andambiguity, single and double loop learning, and tacit and explicit knowledge.Lastly the thesis identifies points of convergence in theory and practice between enterpriserisk management and organizational learning. It is shown that principles and processes governing enterprise risk management activities and techniques can be utilized asmanagement activities to formalise and support organizational learning.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University