The symbiosis of failure: the strategic dynamics of risk and resilience

This chapter is concerned with a consideration of the factors that shape the relationships between risk management and the strategy processes and which serve to erode organisational resilience as a consequence. The academic literature highlights the widespread acceptance of the need for an effective relationship between strategy and risk management, but it also acknowledges that they are not fully integrated in practice. The chapter seeks to identify some of the reasons why this dislocation occurs and it sets out four core issues that are held to be important within this context. These four elements are captured by the acronym RITA in which the processes around Risk, Indeterminacy, Transformations, and Acceptability are used as a basis to consider some of the wider problems that emerge within organisations. The RITA elements are held to interact with each other to generate a level of complexity that challenges the core capabilities and competencies of the organisation and which need to be considered within the context of its strategy. The chapter argues that the effective integration of risk and strategic management require a holistic approach be taken by organisations – a task for which they are currently ill-prepared.

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