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These case studies from CIMA highlight the need to embed risk management within more easily understood behaviours, consistent with the overall organisational culture.

In each case, some form of internal audit team provides either an oversight function or acts as an expert link in that feedback loop.

Frontline staff, managers and specialists should be completely aligned on risk, in part just to ensure that there is a consistency of approach. They should understand instinctively that good performance includes good risk management.

Tesco has continued to thrive during the recession and remains a robust and efficient group of businesses despite the emergence of potential threats around consumer spending and the supply chain. RBS, by contrast, has suffered catastrophic and very public failures of risk management despite a large in-house function and stiff regulation of risk controls.

Birmingham City Council, like all local authorities, is adapting to more commercial modes of operation and is facing diverse threats and opportunities emerging as a result of social change. And DCMS, like many other public sector organisations, has to handle an incredibly complex network of delivery partners within the context of a relatively recent overhaul of central government risk management processes.

Key Findings:

• Risk management is no longer solely a financial discipline, nor is it simply a concern for the internal control function.
• Where organisations retain a discrete risk management cadre – often specialists at monitoring and evaluating a range of risks – their success is dependent on embedding risk awareness in the wider culture of the enterprise.
• Risk management is most successful when it is explicitly linked to operational performance.
• Clear leadership, specific goals, excellent influencing skills and open-mindedness to potential threats and opportunities are essential for effective risk management.
• Bureaucratic processes and systems can hamper good risk management – either as a result of a ‘box-ticking mentality’ or because managers and staff believe they do not need to consider risk themselves.
   

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