This dissertation comprises three papers on the governance of corporate risk: 1. The first paper investigates the role of organizational structures aimed at monitoring corporate risk. Proponents of risk-related governance structures, such as risk committees or Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) programs, assert that risk monitoring adds value by ensuring that corporate risks are managed. An alternative view is that such governance structures are nothing more than window-dressing created in response to regulatory or public pressure. Consistent with the former view, I find that, in the period between 2000 and 2006, firms with more observable risk oversight structures exhibit lower equity and credit risk than firms with fewer or no observable risk oversight structures. I also provide evidence that firms with more observable risk oversight structures experienced higher returns during the worst days of the 2007-2008 financial crisis and were less susceptible to market fluctuations than firms with fewer or no observable risk oversight structures. Finally, I find that firms without observable risk oversight structures experienced higher abnormal returns to recent legislative events relating to risk management than firms with observable risk oversight structures. 2. The most common empirical measure of managerial risk-taking incentives is equity portfolio vega (Vega), which is measured as the dollar change in a manager's equity portfolio for a 0.01 change in the standard deviation of stock returns. However, Vega exhibits at least three undesirable features. First, Vega is expressed as a dollar change. This implicitly assumes that managers with identical Vega have the same incentives regardless of differences in their total equity and other wealth. Second, the small change in the standard deviation of returns used to calculate Vega (i.e., 0.01) yields a very local approximation of managerial risk-taking incentives. If an executive's expected payoff is highly nonlinear over the range of potential stock price and volatility outcomes, a local measure of incentives is unlikely to provide a valid assessment of managerial incentives. Third, Vega is measured as the partial derivative of the manager's equity portfolio with respect to return volatility. This computation does not consider that this partial derivative also varies with changes in stock price. The second paper develops and tests a new measure of managerial risk-taking equity incentives that adjusts for differences in managerial wealth, considers more global changes in price and volatility, and explicitly considers the impact of stock price and volatility changes. We find that our new measure exhibits higher explanatory power and is more robust to model specification than Vegafor explaining a wide range of measures of risk-taking behavior. 3. The third paper examines the relation between shareholder monitoring and managerial risk-taking incentives. We develop a stylized model to show that shareholder monitoring mitigates the effect of contractual risk-taking incentives on the manager's actions. Consistent with the model, we find empirically that the positive association between the CEO's contractual risk-taking incentives and risk-taking behavior decreases with the level of shareholder monitoring. Furthermore, consistent with the board anticipating and optimally responding to shareholder monitoring, boards of firms exposed to more intense monitoring design compensation contracts that provide higher incentives to take risks. Overall, our results suggest that, when evaluating risk-taking incentives provided by a compensation contract, it is important to account for the firm's monitoring environment.

This sixth peer review of the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance analyses the corporate governance framework and practices relating to corporate risk management, in the private sector and in state-owned enterprises. The review covers 26 jurisdictions and is based on a general survey of all participating jurisdictions in December 2012, as well as an in-depth review of corporate risk management in Norway, Singapore and Switzerland. The report finds that while risk-taking is a fundamental driving force in business and entrepreneurship, the cost of risk management failures is often underestimated, both externally and internally, including the cost in terms of management time needed to rectify the situation. The reports thus concludes that corporate governance should ensure that risks are understood, managed, and, when appropriate, communicated.

Dealing with all aspects of risk management that have undergone significant innovation in recent years, this book aims at being a reference work in its field. Different to other books on the topic, it addresses the challenges and opportunities facing the different risk management types in banks, insurance companies, and the corporate sector. Due to the rising volatility in the financial markets as well as political and operational risks affecting the business sector in general, capital adequacy rules are equally important for non-financial companies. For the banking sector, the book emphasizes the modifications implied by the Basel II proposal. The volume has been written for academics as well as practitioners, in particular finance specialists. It is unique in bringing together such a wide array of experts and correspondingly offers a complete coverage of recent developments in risk management.

This collection of essays deals with the situated management of risk in a wide variety of organizational settings - aviation, mental health, railway project management, energy, toy manufacture, financial services, chemicals regulation, and NGOs. Each chapter connects the analysis of risk studies with critical themes in organization studies more generally based on access to, and observations of, actors in the field. The emphasis in these contributions is upon the variety of ways in which organizational actors, in combination with a range of material technologies and artefacts, such as safety reporting systems, risk maps and key risk indicators, accomplish and make sense of the normal work of managing risk - riskwork. In contrast to a preoccupation with disasters and accidents after the event, the volume as whole is focused on the situationally specific character of routine risk management work. It emerges that this riskwork is highly varied, entangled with material artefacts which represent and construct risks and, importantly, is not confined to formal risk management departments or personnel. Each chapter suggest that the distributed nature of this riskwork lives uneasily with formalized risk management protocols and accountability requirements. In addition, riskwork as an organizational process makes contested issues of identity and values readily visible. These 'back stage/back office' encounters with risk are revealed as being as much emotional as they are rationally calculative. Overall, the collection combines constructivist sensibilities about risk objects with a micro-sociological orientation to the study of organizations.

Engaging Risk: A Guide for College Leaders offers presidents, provosts, deans, senior administrators, and faculty leaders a road map for establishing a first-rate program of risk management at their institution. Presenting risk governance as an important component of leadership, Engaging Risk adapts the central concepts of Enterprise Risk Management to a new world very different from the corporations for which ERM was designed. Of special interest to the leaders of small to mid-size liberal arts colleges, this guide takes its readers on a lively campus tour of risk, and provides them with step-by-step plans to identify, evaluate, and manage the most important risks faced by their college.

Essential insights on the various aspects of enterprise risk management If you want to understand enterprise risk management from some of the leading academics and practitioners of this exciting new methodology, Enterprise Risk Management is the book for you. Through in-depth insights into what practitioners of this evolving business practice are actually doing as well as anticipating what needs to be taught on the topic, John Fraser and Betty Simkins have sought out the leading experts in this field to clearly explain what enterprise risk management is and how you can teach, learn, and implement these leading practices within the context of your business activities. In this book, the authors take a broad view of ERM, or what is called a holistic approach to ERM. Enterprise Risk Management introduces you to the wide range of concepts and techniques for managing risk in a holistic way that correctly identifies risks and prioritizes the appropriate responses. This invaluable guide offers a broad overview of the different types of techniques: the role of the board, risk tolerances, risk profiles, risk workshops, and allocation of resources, while focusing on the principles that determine business success. This comprehensive resource also provides a thorough introduction to enterprise risk management as it relates to credit, market, and operational risk, as well as the evolving requirements of the rating agencies and their importance to the overall risk management in a corporate setting. Filled with helpful tables and charts, Enterprise Risk Management offers a wealth of knowledge on the drivers, the techniques, the benefits, as well as the pitfalls to avoid, in successfully implementing enterprise risk management. Discusses the history of risk management and more recently developed enterprise risk management practices and how you can prudently implement these techniques within the context of your underlying business activities Provides coverage of topics such as the role of the chief risk officer, the use of anonymous voting technology, and risk indicators and their role in risk management Explores the culture and practices of enterprise risk management without getting bogged down by the mathematics surrounding the more conventional approaches to financial risk management This informative guide will help you unlock the incredible potential of enterprise risk management, which has been described as a proxy for good management.

Risk Governance is a tour de force. Every risk manager, every risk analyst, every risk researcher must read this book - it is the demarcation point for all further advances in risk policy and risk research. Renn provides authoritative guidance on how to manage risks based on a definitive synthesis of the research literature. The skill with which he builds practical recommendations from solid science is unprecedented. Thomas Dietz, Director, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, USA A masterpiece of new knowledge and wisdom with illustrative examples of tested applications to realworld cases. The book is recommendable also to interested students in different disciplines as a timely textbook on 'risk beyond risk'. Norio Okada, Full Professor and Director at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan There are classic environmental works such as The Tragedy of the Commons by Hardin, Risk Society by Beck, The Theory of Communicative Action by Habermas, and the seminal volumes by Ostrom on governing the commons. Renns book fits right into this series of important milestones of environmental studies. Jochen Jaeger, Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada Risk Governance provides a valuable survey of the whole field of risk and demonstrates how scientific, economic, political and civil society actors can participate in inclusive risk governance. Jobst Conrad, Senior Scientist, Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany Renn offers a remarkably fair-minded and systematic approach to bringing together the diverse fields that have something to say about 'risk'. Risk Governance moves us along the path from the noisy, formative stage of thinking about risk to one with a stronger empirical, theoretical, and analytical foundation. Baruch Fischhoff, PhD, Howard Heinz University Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA 'I cannot describe how impressed I am at the breadth and coherence of Renn's career's work! Written with remarkable clarity and minimal technical jargon... [this] should be required reading in risk courses!' John Graham, former director of the Harvard Risk Center and former deputy director of the Office of Budget and Management of the Unites States Administration This book, for the first time, brings together and updates the groundbreaking work of renowned risk theorist and researcher Ortwin Renn, integrating the major disciplinary concepts of risk in the social, engineering and natural sciences. The book opens with the context of risk handling before flowing through the core topics of assessment, evaluation, perception, management and communication, culminating in a look at the transition from risk management to risk governance and a glimpse at a new understanding of risk in (post)modern societies.