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Lecture with Professor Michael Power, London School of Economics and Political Science

Rethinking the moral economy of risk management
Slides from lecture: Rethinking the moral economy of risk management
Since the early 1990s there has been a marked expansion of what some have called the ‘risk industry’. An important characteristic of this development is the manner in which risk management has become an organizing principle, and a distinctive logic of governance in the neoliberal state. Yet the emergence of this distinctive moral economy of risk accountability also accentuated defensiveness and blame management. Risk management became materialised in extensive due process and audit trails and second order risks to reputation came to have as much value as first order risks to health, wealth and security.
There can be no doubt that the elaboration of risk management as a governance mechanism within regulatory initiatives such as Basel 2 or the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation has created illusions of control and security which have proven to be of little use in either preventing or responding to the financial crisis. Individuals and organizations were deceived or, at best, distracted by practices with little or no early warning capacity. At the centre of this failure of knowledge lies a conception of ‘risk appetite’ understood predominantly in terms of target levels of financial capital.
This lecture will address the recent history of risk management as discussed in my book Organized Uncertainty (Oxford 2007) and will normatively consider the prospects for recovering the moral and democratic meaning of risk appetite.
The lecture will be followed by a reception.
Link to Michael Power's homepage http://www2.lse.ac.uk/accounting/facultyAndStaff/profiles/power.aspx
For further information please contact Katja Høeg Tingleff kht.ioa@cbs.dk
Blog 'IOA Public Lecture Series'
June 3, 2010

Tid: 03.06 15.30 -17.30


Sted: Copenhagen Business School
Porcelænshaven 20
2000 Frederiksberg


Lokale: Ovnhallen




Sidst opdateret af Katja Høeg Tingleff 10.06.2011