Читать книгу The Failure of Risk Management - Douglas W. Hubbard - Страница 17

Long definition: A potential loss, disaster, or other undesirable event measured with probabilities assigned to losses of various magnitudes

Shorter (equivalent) definition: The possibility that something bad could happen

The second definition is more to the point, but the first definition describes a way to quantify a risk. First, we determine a probability that the undesirable event will occur. Then, we need to determine the magnitude of the loss from this event in terms of financial losses, lives lost, and so on.

The undesirable event could be just about anything, including natural disasters, a major product recall, the default of a major debtor, hackers releasing sensitive customer data, political instability surrounding a foreign office, workplace accidents resulting in injuries, or a pandemic flu virus disrupting supply chains. It could also mean personal misfortunes, such as a car accident on the way to work, loss of a job, a heart attack, and so on. Almost anything that could go wrong is a risk.

Because risk management generally applies to a management process in an organization, I'll focus a bit less on personal risks. Of course, my chance of having a heart attack is an important personal risk to assess and I certainly try to manage that risk. But when I'm talking about the failure of risk management—as the title of this book indicates—I'm not really focusing on whether individuals couldn't do a better job of managing personal risks like losing weight to avoid heart attacks. I'm referring to major organizations that have adopted what is ostensibly some sort of formal risk management approach that they use to make critical business and public policy decisions.

Now, let us discuss the second half of the phrase risk management. Again, as with risk, I find multiple, wordy definitions for management, but here is one that seems to represent and combine many good sources.