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  • October 2009
  • Article
  • Harvard Business Review

Managing Risk in the New World

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Anette Mikes, Robert Simons, Peter Tufano and Michael Hofmann Jr.
  • Format:Print
  • | Pages:8
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Abstract

Five experts gathered recently to discuss the future of enterprise risk management: Kaplan, the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School, who with his colleague David Norton developed the balanced scorecard; Mikes, an assistant professor at HBS who studies the evolution of risk management and the role of the chief risk officer; Simons, the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at HBS; Tufano, the Sylvan C . Coleman Professor of Financial Management at HBS; and Hofmann, the chief risk officer at Koch Industries. The panel was moderated by HBR senior editor David Champion. Among the questions they addressed were: How predictable was the financial meltdown of 2008-2009? Did new tools for assessing risk give a false sense of security? How do the challenges facing industrial companies differ from those facing the financial sector? Is outsourcing an effective risk-management tool? Have capital structures become a bit too efficient in many companies? What makes a good chief risk officer? Of all the management tasks that were bungled in the period leading up to the global recession of 2008--2009, none was bungled more egregiously than the management of risk. This HBR Spotlight attempts to untangle the reasons that major systemic failures occurred, and to pin down some lessons for leaders and managers in the future.

Keywords

Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis; Capital Structure; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Risk Management

Citation

Kaplan, Robert S., Anette Mikes, Robert Simons, Peter Tufano, and Michael Hofmann Jr. "Managing Risk in the New World." Harvard Business Review 87, no. 10 (October 2009): 68–75.
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About The Authors

Robert S. Kaplan

Accounting and Management
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Robert Simons

Accounting and Management
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Peter Tufano

General Management
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More from the Authors
  • Helen Keller: Changing the World By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun
  • Corporate Ownership and ESG Performance By: Belen Villalonga, Peter Tufano and Boya Wang
  • Innovations in Evaluating Ambulatory Costs of Cystic Fibrosis Care: A Comparative Study Across Multidisciplinary Care Centers in Ireland and the United States By: Emma Brady, Ryan C. Perkins, Kate Cullen, Gregory S. Sawicki, Robert S. Kaplan and Gerardine Doyle
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