Managing Risk at Big School

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Managing Risk at Big School

• Professor Edward P. Borodzicz
• Portsmouth Business School

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About me!

• Trained as Anthropologist and Psychologist.
• Began studies looking at human behaviour in
  crisis and disasters.
• Designed and Evaluated Simulation Exercises for
  Emergency Services in UK, France and China.
• Set up two MScs at Leicester and Southampton
  Universities.
• Interested in the Design and Evaluation of Crisis
  Management Training for Business Risk
  Continuity Games.

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The Context

• More people
• Inter-connectivity
• Different ways of living
• Greater expectation of a risk free environment
• Regulation, Business Continuity and Hefce

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A Brief History of Risk

• Risk As old as the oldest trade?
• Ancient philosophers of East and West
•  
• Traditional/primitive societies - Oracles
•  
• Documented among academics for over a Century
• (Todhunter, 1865)
•  
• Speculative Risk and Capitalism

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• Risk and Social Sciences
• Risk and Irrationality
• Systemic Failure
• Homeostatic Risks

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Some Theoretical Perspectives 1 Psychology

• Decision making theorists question the notion of
  human rationality.
•  
• Humans regularly make irrational choices on a
  regular basis, even when future events have a
  known probability.
• Dispositional factors can be found to mediate
  risk taking in experimental settings.
•  
• It is difficult to measure the difference in
  peoples behaviour in real and simulated risk
  situations.

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Some Theoretical Perspectives 2Systems Theory

• Theory originates from the work of Von
  Bertalanffy in the 1920s.
•  
• Von Bertalanffy looked at Organic Systems.
•  
• Outwardly variant systems display common internal
  similarities.
•  
• Theory has been applied in a number of diverse
  contexts.
• Interest from Theorists Studying Disaster
  Causation and Management

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Some Theoretical Perspectives 2Systems Theory

• Perrow's Normal Accident Theory
• Turners Model
• Isomorphic Learning
• The Resident Pathogen Metaphor
• High Reliability Systems

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Some Theoretical Perspectives 3 Risk Homeostasis

• Probability of risk is always 1
•  
• Road safety
•  
• Child proof bottle tops!
•  
• Legislation and regulation should be considered
  in its Meaningful Context
•  
• Fix a steel spike to the steering wheel

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A Summary of Contemporary Risk

• Risk means different things to different people
  in different contexts.
•  
• It is familiar risks that cause the most problems
•  
• There is an apparent irrationality in the way
  people perceive risks
•  
• It is more difficult to distinguish between pure
  and speculative risk for insurance purposes.
•  
• The Organisation is the risk!

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Risk Strategies

• Risk Identification
• registers and matrixes
• Risk Avoidance
• Transfer
• Risk Retention
• Risk Reduction

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Human Issues

• Whistleblowers
• Reputation Risk
• Poor HRM

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Threats to Universities 1

• Fire and Flood
•  
• Fraud and embezzlement
•  
• System failures (human and technical)
•  
• Litigation Culture (Both students and staff)
•  
• Nutters
•  
• Whistleblowers
•  
• Corporate Manslaughter

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Threats to Universities 2

• Terrorism
• Rapid Fluctuation in World Markets
•  
• Secrecy
•  
• Compartmentalised approach to risk management
•  
• Trial by committee
•  
• Dealing with Impossible Workloads

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Some (Anonymous!) Case Studies

• The Visiting Research fellow from Hell
•  
• The Naughty Professor
•  
• Nasty Problem with the computer
•  
• The VCs travel arrangements
• Racing
•  
• Pedro de Lanuza!

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High Principles at Big School!

•  
• Reasons Pathogenic Model
• Schizophrenia

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At Departmental Levels

• 1. Tribunals/grievance procedures by teaching and
  research staff over discrimination
• 2. Academic staff turnover
• 3. High levels of sickness/absence/stress
• 4. Administrative staff turnover
• 5. High number of appeals or cases of litigation
  brought by students
• 6. Poor levels of course completions
• 7. High number of internal Staff PhDs by
  publication.
• 8. Low number of PhDs qualifications from other
  universities.

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At Departmental Levels

• 9. Teaching staff administering their own course
  evaluations or no course evaluations
• 10. Reports of a poor working culture
• 11.High outputs of research despite poor level of
  research income or vice versa!
• 12.Lack of transparent processes for distributing
  travel and conference budgets.
• 13. Checking that minuted meetings were actually
  attended
• 14 Failure to conduct exit interviews for staff
  independently of the department
• 15. Failure to conduct exit interviews for
  students administered independently of the
  department
• 16. High sickness/stress/grievance levels
  reported after QAA examinations

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At faculty levels

• 1. Low usage of Whistle-blowing procedures
  despite high numbers of the above
• 2. Health and Safety complaints
• 3. A failure to resolve grievance procedures by
  teaching and research staff without recourse to
  Unions or outside representation.
• 4. A failure to resolve grievance procedures
  without at least a threat of litigation.
• 5. Litigation
• 6. Failure to check staff CVs systematically -
  do these relate to verifiable qualifications.
• 7.Failure to check student CVs systematically -
  do these relate to verifiable qualifications.
• 8. Transparency distributions of research funding
  within faculty.
• 9. Distribution of sabbaticals

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If all risks cannot be managed, then we need to
know how to respond ?

• Generic Crisis Training
• Risk Management through Joined up thinking!

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Crisis Management

• Understand event quality
• Improve communication
• Be prepared to break rules
• Become your own terrorist!

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Resilience understand and manage crises

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Some tips for good simulation practice

• First, simulations should display an external
  simplicity which masks their internal complexity.
  
• Second, games should have some theoretical
  underpinning. Simulations should be designed
  with some clear purpose.
• Third, games should contain 'an element of
  surprise'.
• Fourth, the social structure of the group of
  players may conflict too strongly with the
  desired power structure in the game.

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Some tips for good simulation practice

• First, simulations should display an external
  simplicity which masks their internal complexity.
  
• Second, games should have some theoretical
  underpinning. Simulations should be designed
  with some clear purpose.
• Third, games should contain 'an element of
  surprise'.
• Fourth, the social structure of the group of
  players may conflict too strongly with the
  desired power structure in the game.

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Some tips for good simulation practice

• Fifth, in management training, 'verisimilitude'
  is valued more highly than realism.
• Sixth, there is a difference between running and
  merely administering a game.
• Seventh, games are culture sensitive.
• Eighth, all simulation games will display an
  emotional impact.