Publications
Publications
- 2009
- Enterprise Risk Management: Today's Leading Research and Best Practices for Tomorrow's Executives
Becoming the Lamp Bearer: The Emerging Roles of the Chief Risk Officer
By: Anette Mikes
Abstract
Enterprise risk management, under the leadership of chief risk officers (CROs), has the promise to bring enterprise-wide risks, which threaten the achievement of the firm's strategic objectives, into the open and under control. Its organizational significance is that, by providing a process to identify, measure, monitor, and manage uncertainty in strategic decision-making, strategic planning, performance management, and deal-approval processes, it enables top management to maintain or alter patterns in risk-taking. This chapter addresses the question: How may CROs realize that organizational significance? I draw on the existing practitioner and academic literature on the role of CROs and on a number of case studies from my ongoing research program on the evolution of the role of the CRO. I outline and illustrate four major roles that senior risk officers may fulfill: compliance champion, modeling expert, strategic controller, and strategic advisor and discuss the contingencies that shape the mix and effectiveness of these roles in actual organizational settings.
Keywords
Citation
Mikes, Anette. "Becoming the Lamp Bearer: The Emerging Roles of the Chief Risk Officer." Chap. 5 in Enterprise Risk Management: Today's Leading Research and Best Practices for Tomorrow's Executives, edited by John Fraser and Betty Simkins. John Wiley & Sons, 2009.