Interview
PRACTICE
Risk at the centre Cambridge academic Michelle Tuveson is on a mission to get risk managers to think more broadly about the risks their organisations face BY NEIL HODGE
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lanning for the potential impact of a solar storm taking out large chunks of the world’s telecommunications network or the possibility of another financial crisis causing havoc to the global economy may not be top of most companies’ risk agendas, but for Michelle Tuveson, organisations need to pay closer attention to such possibilities. “The lessons learned by society, firms and other stakeholders following the global financial crisis should be that scenarios of systemic failure and the collapse of major companies or decimation of entire sectors is possible,” she says. For Tuveson, executive director of the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies (CRS) at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, looking at systemic risk is as equally valid as looking at organisational risk because both approaches show how prepared – and resilient – an organisation may be to external risks. “Our research looks at what might be the events or scenarios that could have the biggest potential impact on industry sectors as a whole, and the issues that companies should consider as a result of that,” says Tuveson. “Organisations can then assess what their potential exposure could be to those risks, and take appropriate
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Sugar in foods, obesity and the opioid crisis all have the potential to become major, long-term general liability risks that could impact a range of industries worldwide
Enterprise Risk
