Risk Management

Navigating Political Risk in Uncertain Times

social-media-politicsJoin us on November 15 at 10 a.m. to explore effective ways to manage political risk and gain insight on how to navigate the landscape and find potential for competitive advantage.

Whether your organization is a multinational player or just starting to explore expansion into the global market, political risk cannot be ignored or underestimated. Political risk is taking on new forms, both real and perceived, and may be at its highest level since the Cold War. Companies have to elevate their awareness of inherent challenges of everything from political violence to currency inconvertibility.

Executives will learn:

• To identify, measure, and manage political risk

• To examine the macro-level political risks that could affect your business interests

• About the relationship between the state and market in social and economic relations

The Institute will welcome Les Brorsen, Americas Vice Chair Public Policy at EY; Professor Richard Herrmann, Professor & Political Science Department Char at The Ohio State University; Roger Schwartz, Senior Vice President at Aon Risk Solutions; and Sarah Brooks, Associate Professor of Political Science at The Ohio State University.

If you’re interested in attending, contact Denita Strietelmeier at (614) 688-8289 or send an email to RiskInstitute@fisher.osu.edu. For more information about this and the upcoming sessions in our Risk Series, please visit our website.

Risk Institute board chair elected chair of Risk Management Association

Helga Houston, chief risk officer at Huntington and chair of the board at The Risk Institute, was elected chair of The Risk Management Association (RMA). Her one-year term began September 1, 2016.

Helga Houston speaks at Risk Institute Annual Conference 2016

Helga Houston speaks at Risk Institute Annual Conference 2016

Helga Houston is past vice chair of RMA’s Board of Directors.

Houston has over 30 years of diversified banking experience in risk management, business development, and client relationships. Prior to joining Huntington, she held positions with Bank of America, Crocker National Bank, and Home Federal Savings and Loan.

Houston earned her bachelor’s degree from Westmont College and her MBA from the University of Southern California.

About RMA

Founded in 1914, The Risk Management Association is a not-for-profit, member-driven professional association whose sole purpose is to advance the use of sound risk management principles in the financial services industry. RMA promotes an enterprise approach to risk management that focuses on credit risk, market risk and operational risk. Headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, RMA has 2,500 institutional members that include banks of all sizes as well as nonbank financial institutions. They are represented in the Association by 18,000 individuals located throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia/Pacific.

About The Risk Institute

The Risk Institute at The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business exists to bridge the gap between academia and practice. The Institute is a collection of forward-thinking companies and academics that understand effective risk management strategies not only protect firms, but position firms to create growth and value. The Institute operates in a unique intersection between our faculty, students, and professionals from a broad cross-section of industries.  With our leading-edge approach to risk management, The Risk Institute creates a space for risk-centered conversations, ideas, and strategies that are unlikely to happen anywhere else.

This release originally published on Sept. 6, 2016.

Governance and culture take center stage at The Risk Institute’s Annual Conference

Conversation surrounding governance and culture recently took center stage at The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business, as The Risk Institute explored the impacts of the two key aspects of business at its Annual Conference. The two-day conference brought together Risk Institute members, business leaders, experts and faculty thought leaders from Fisher for an in-depth examination of the risk management and strategic implications of governance and culture.

Phil Renaud and Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams discuss maintaining culture through crisis.

Phil Renaud and Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams discuss maintaining culture through crisis.

Considering the various sides of governance and culture is critical to understanding how to leverage risk management to create value for an organization. The conference featured four keynote speakers, Gordon Bethune, former CEO of Continental Airlines; Cameron Mitchell, founder and CEO of Cameron Mitchell Restaurants; Randall Kroszner, former Governor of the Federal Reserve System; and David Gebler, author of best-selling book The 3 Power Values.

Bethune opened the conference and focused on his experience turning around Continental Airlines over a decade, which is detailed in his book, From Worst to First. He emphasized the importance of building accountability between employees and the organization saying, “What gets measured and rewarded, gets done.”

Mitchell is a self-described serial entrepreneur who understands that taking risks is necessary to be successful in business saying, “I may shoot myself in the foot and walk with a limp, but I’ll never shoot myself in the head and make a fatal mistake.”

Academic Director Isil Erel speaking at Annual Conference 2016.

Academic Director Isil Erel speaking at Annual Conference 2016.

During his time with the Federal Reserve System and as a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Kroszner never imagined he would be helping guide America’s economy through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. He discussed the potential ramifications of the Fed keeping interests rates at historic lows since 2008 saying, “When your short-run policy becomes a long-run policy, you will always run into unintended consequences.”

Named one of America’s top Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior, Gebler is an innovator of new approaches that integrate culture, ethics, values and performance. His talk detailed how to know if your organization’s culture is a risk factor utilizing the three power values— integrity, transparency and commitment.

In addition to the keynotes, the third-annual conference brought together business leaders and experts for a series of RISKx presentations and panel discussions on women in risk, governance and culture related to business. The culture discussion explored  employees’ attitudes toward risk, mergers and acquisitions, maintaining culture through crisis, and emerging risks in the energy industry.

The Risk Institute’s Executive Education Series will resume November 15 with a discussion on Political Risk.

 

Building responsible and resilient supply chains

Supply chains have become global and highly complex. Building and maintaining a resilient supply chain is a key success factor for businesses operating in a fast-changing world.connected-globe-rgb-international

EY Climate Change and Sustainability Services (CCaSS) collaborated with the UN Global Compact on the study in an effort to better understand how companies are managing their supply chains in ways that support the objectives of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  The UN Global Compact is the world’s largest sustainability initiative and EY has been a participant since 2009.

The report draws on business inputs across geographies, sectors and business models. CCaSS and Advisory Supply Chain and Operations professionals interviewed 70 clients globally to explore how they are embedding sustainability in their supply chains by managing risks and adopting new commitments around human rights, the environment and the well-being of communities in which they operate.

Overall, the study indicates that by improving environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance throughout the supply chain, companies can enhance processes, reduce costs, increase productivity, innovate, differentiate and improve societal outcomes.

Conclusions explored in the report include:

  • Companies are on a continuum from managing risks through creating shared value with stakeholders to achieving differentiation for their products or services;
  • Leaders are achieving competitive advantage in the supply chain through increased collaboration, technology innovation, greater efficiency and supplier diversity;
  • Mature supply chain models integrate buying and sourcing practices with product design and development to enhance sustainability results tied to their manufacturing and service delivery;
  • Currently, only a small percentage of companies have achieved leadership maturity levels that can lead to shared value with suppliers, enable suppliers to operate as an extension of the business and engage in meaningful, collaborative dialogue.

Based on interviews we identified several actions companies can take to further embed sustainability in their supply chains:

  • Assess materiality, to focus on the most pressing issues, taking UN Global Compact principles into consideration
  • Align resources, structures and processes to focus on supply chain sustainability across the organization
  • Train management and suppliers on market practices
  • Invest in diverse and inclusive supply chain partners
  • Stretch existing sustainability goals beyond direct operations, to include tiers of the supply chain
  • Deploy technology to increase accountability and transparency
  • Leverage buying power and influence to trigger shifts toward supply chain sustainability
  • Disclose supply chain information, beyond stand-alone sustainability reporting mechanisms

This post was written and published by EY, one The Risk Institute’s founding members, in August 2016. To view the original article or download detailed study findings, click here. 

From Risk to Resilience: Find (& Overcome) Your Company’s Weakest Link

resilient bud

Don’t fall through the cracks — grow through them.

In an interconnected, volatile, global economy, supply chains have become increasingly vulnerable. Disruptions — even minor shipment delays — can cause significant financial losses for companies and substantially impact shareholder value. Globalization has made anticipating disruptions and managing them when they do occur more challenging. The potential risks of disruptions are often hidden, and the potential impacts may not be understood, which often results in black swan events – events that can only be fully understood after the fact.

Over the last seven years, researchers at The Ohio State University have been exploring the concept of enterprise resilience, i.e. how companies can prosper in the face of turbulent change by being able to recognize, understand, and compensate for vulnerabilities.

The result is the SCRAM (supply chain resilience assessment and management) framework, which enables a business to identify and prioritize the supply chain vulnerabilities it faces, as well as the capabilities it should strengthen to offset those vulnerabilities.

Six Vulnerabilities You Need to Know About

Every business has its vulnerabilities, and most of the time those vulnerabilities are inherent to the business and difficult to avoid, but by recognizing them, you’ll be better equipped to deal with disruptions as they happen.

1. Turbulence

Definition: Environment characterized by frequent changes in external factors beyond the company’s control

Examples: Unpredictability in demand, fluctuations in currencies and prices, geopolitical disruptions, natural disasters, technology failures, pandemics

2. Deliberate threats

Definition: Intentional attacks aimed at disrupting operations or causing human or financial harm

Examples: Terrorism and sabotage, piracy and theft, labor disputes, special interest groups, industrial espionage, product liability

3. External pressures

Definition: Influences, not specifically targeting the company, that create business constraints or barriers

Examples: Competitive innovation, government regulations, price pressures, corporate responsibility, social/cultural issues, environmental, health and safety concerns

4. Resource limits

Definition: Constraints on output based upon availability of the factors of production

Examples: Raw material availability, utilities availability, human resources, natural resources

5. Sensitivity

Definition: Importance of carefully controlled conditions for product and process integrity

Examples: Restricted Materials, supply purity, stringency of manufacturing, fragility of handling, complexity of operations, reliability of equipment, safety hazards, visibility of disruption to stakeholders, symbolic profile of brand, customer requirements for quality

6. Connectivity

Definition: Degree of interdependence and reliance on outside entities

Examples: Scale and extent of supply network, import/export channels, reliance on specialty sources, reliance on information flow, degree of outsourcing

So in the face of all these disruptions, what’s the answer?

Answer: resilience.

Resilience is the capacity of an enterprise to survive, adapt and grow in the face of turbulent change.

Resilience means improving the adaptability of global supply chains, collaborating with stakeholders and leveraging information technology to assure continuity, even in the face of catastrophic disruptions.

Resilience goes beyond mitigating risk; it enables a business to gain competitive advantage by learning how to deal with disruptions more effectively than its competitors and possibly even using those disruptions to its advantage.

Resilient systems don’t fail in the face of disturbances; rather, they adapt.

 

Article adapted from “From Risk to Resilience: Learning to Deal with Disruption,” by Joseph Fiksel, Mikaella Polyviou, Keely L. Croxton, and Timothy J. Pettit.

The Risk Institute at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business exists to bridge the gap between academia and corporate America. By combining the latest research with the real-world expertise of America’s most forward-thinking companies, the Risk Institute isn’t just reporting risk management’s current trends — it’s creating tomorrow’s best practices.