Organized Uncertainty

Designing a World of Risk Management

Michael Power

Shows that over the last decade risk management has become an increasingly important phenomenom in businesses and organizations
Argues that this expansion is less to do with real dangers, and more to do with organizational accountability and legitimacy
Extends and develops the arguments of Power's earlier, and highly influential, book The Audit Society (OUP, 1997)
The signficance of this argument extends beyond management and accounting to public management, politics, and sociology

Organized Uncertainty

Designing a World of Risk Management

Michael Power

Description

Since the mid-1990s risk management has undergone a dramatic expansion in its reach and significance, being transformed from an aspect of management control to become a benchmark of good governance for banks, hospitals, schools, charities and many other organizations. Numerous standards for risk management practice have been produced by a variety of transnational organizations. While these many designs and blueprints are accompanied by ideals of enterprise, value production, and good governance, it is argued that the rise of risk management has also coincided with an intensification of auditing and control processes. The legalization and bureacratization of organizational life has increased because risk management has created new demands for proof and evidence of action. In turn, these demands have generated new risks to reputation.

In short, this important book traces the rise of the managerial concept of risk and the different logics and values which underpin it, showing that it has much less to do with real dangers and opportunities than might be thought, and more to do with organizational accountability and legitimacy.

Organized Uncertainty

Designing a World of Risk Management

Michael Power

1: Organized Uncertainty: An Introduction
2: Turning Organizations Inside Out: The Rise of Internal Control
3: Standardizing Risk Management: Making Up Processes and People
4: Putting Categories to Work: The Invention of Operational Risk
5: Governing Reputation: The Outside Comes In
6: Making Risk Auditable: Legalization and Organization
7: 7. Designing a World of Risk Management

Organized Uncertainty

Designing a World of Risk Management

Michael Power

Author Information

Michael Power, Professor of Accounting and Research Director, ESRC Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics and Political Science

Organized Uncertainty

Designing a World of Risk Management

Michael Power

Reviews and Awards

"Power's book is illuminating and bringing in the foreground a highly relevant topic for today businesses and society. As a preliminary exploration of the ideas embodied by risk management understood as risk governance, the book is really worth reading even if we will be missing the flavor of field studies, because Power's aim was so broad and ideational. Anyway, this book may help debunk many ideas about risk and risk management, written by a talented management accountant and philosopher." - Laurent Magne, Society and Business Review

"...getAbstract recommends this informed and informative analysis to risk management professionals and professors who will appreciate Powers depth of knowledge." - getAbsract

"Power's new book brings much the same note of sceptisism to another world-sweeping managerial pheomenon: the drive to convert uncertainty about the future into identifiable risks...[..] So what will be the new model to challenge, and perhaps even displace, risk management? We await Michael Power's next decennial book to tell us in the hope that it will be as iconoclastic and illuminating as the present one." - Rudolf klein, London School of Economics, Public Polic