Assignment task:
As we have discussed in the module, risk and its management is a multifaceted topic that must be addressed by all organizations in a variety of ways. As such, your paper will allow you to demonstrate a deeper level of understanding of an area of your choice. You are encouraged to draw on your own experience and reflections from your previous work, the lectures, and seminars as appropriate to critically discuss the topics below. Therefore, you should choose one of the following:
Identify an organisation and discuss how it identifies, addresses and manages risks (on a scale of your choice) over a period of time in which stakeholder attitudes towards risk were changing. Critically discuss the organization's risk management processes and make recommendations for improvement.
Identify a project, successful or not, and discuss the attitudes and issues that influenced how project risk and uncertainty was managed by the major stakeholders. Critically reflect on the suitability of these attitudes, particularly with reference to the work on stakeholder management.
Choose an incident in which existing risk management measures did not prevent a failure. Analyse and critically discuss what went wrong, what alternate measures might have been used, linking your discussion to the literature on accidents. How might the stakeholders have contributed to this incident? How might the stakeholders have prevented this incident?
Choose a contested technology and discuss how different conceptions of risk (i.e. probabilistic, psychometric, cultural etc) have shaped the public debate about adoption and diffusion of the technology. Critically discuss how stakeholders currently manage these risks or perceptions of risk. How can these different actors/stakeholders (e.g. Civil society, industry, government etc.) improve in terms of how they manage these different risks, whether perceived or real?
It is expected that each paper will show excellent research and analysis skills. You are strongly advised to discuss your choice of topic with the convenor(s) or your tutor early in the term. You are encouraged to account for your chosen specialism in your essay (ie. Project management students may wish to include project-related risk elements, strategic innovation management students may wish to examine risks related to innovation etc.)