Anette Mikes
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Anette Mikes is an assistant professor in the Accounting & Management Unit. She teaches Financial Reporting and Control and in 2010 launched (with Professor Robert Kaplan) the new executive education program Risk Management for Corporate Leaders. She received a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics (LSE), where her dissertation, “Enterprise Risk Management in Action,” was the first field-based research study on risk management in financial institutions. Her subsequent publication "Risk Management and Calculative Cultures" won the 2009 David Solomons Prize.
She also holds an M.Sc. in economics and finance from the Budapest University of Economics and an M.Sc. in accounting and finance, with distinction, from LSE. During her doctoral studies, Professor Mikes was a tutorial fellow at LSE and an executive education associate at London Business School.
A former advisor to the Group Risk function at Standard Chartered Bank, between 2007-2010, Professor Mikes instigated and directed the CRO Futures Research Initiative in the United Kingdom. With the cooperation of a number of senior risk officers contributing to the British Bankers’ Association’s Risk Advisory Panel, this research program investigated evolving directions in risk management and the emerging roles of senior risk officers. Professor Mikes also studies risk management practices in high-risk nonfinancial organizations, such as the Canadian energy company Hydro One and the Mars Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Beyond research and teaching, she enjoys literature, the performing arts, swimming, and sailing.
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Research Summary
Risk Management and Conflicting Managerial Objectives
by
Anette Mikes
Risk management is emerging as a management control practice for increasing the visibility of uncertainties and threats surrounding business enterprises. Both the number and the scope of chief risk officers have expanded dramatically in the last ten years. In the light of the disastrous performance of the financial services industry during the subprime credit crisis, however, it seems that risk management has not fulfilled its promise of helping managers safeguard business enterprises from undesired losses. Balancing growth and risk objectives remains a challenge for businesses and warrants the reconsideration of risk management and governance practices, managerial incentive structures, and the ways in which risk is communicated to various stakeholders.
Through a series of case studies, Professor Mikes has examined the varied roles that risk managers play in steering the risk profile of their businesses and in making line managers more aware of the risk implications of their decisions. The objective is to enable these managers to understand different types of good risk management in their organizational settings and to uncover the constellation of organizational, cultural, managerial, and institutional attributes that support best practices.