Managing Risk and Performance: A Guide for Government Decision Makers (Wiley Finance) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1118658140 ISBN 13: 9781118658147

Publisher: Wiley, 2014

Synopsis

Discover analytical tools and practices to help improve the quality of risk management in government organizations

Federal agencies increasingly recognize the importance of active risk management to help ensure that they can carry out their missions. High impact events, once thought to occur only rarely, now occur with surprising frequency. Managing Risk in Government Agencies and Programs provides insight into the increasingly critical role of effective risk management, while offering analytical tools and promising practices that can help improve the quality of risk management in government organizations.

• Includes chapters that contribute to the knowledge of government executives and managers who want to establish or implement risk management, and especially Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), in their agencies
• Features chapters written by federal risk managers, public administration practitioners, and scholars

Showing government officials how to improve their organization's risk management capabilities, Managing Risk in Government Agencies and Programs meets a growing demand from federal departments and agencies that find themselves increasingly embarrassed by risky events that raise questions about their ability to carry out their missions.

About this title

About the Author

THOMAS H. STANTON teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He is President-Elect of the Association of Federal Enterprise Risk Management (AFERM) and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Mr. Stanton is a former member of the Federal Senior Executive Service. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California–Davis, a Master of Arts from Yale University, and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School and has written extensively on governance and risk management in the financial crisis.

DOUGLAS W. WEBSTER is the Founder and President of the Cambio Consulting Group, LLC, and co-founder and past President of the Association of Federal Enterprise Risk Management (AFERM). He served as Chief Financial Officer of the U.S. Department of Labor in 2008–2009 and has 20 years of experience consulting to over two dozen federal and state agencies. Dr. Webster received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of California–Los Angeles, a Master of Science in Systems Management from the University of Southern California, and a Doctorate in Business Administration from United States International University.

From the Back Cover

Risk management is critical for government agencies

Successfully managing risk in government agencies allows policy makers and government managers to establish the sound policies and organizational cohesion required to mitigate risks and increase agency productivity. Faced with the challenges of widespread budget cuts, political turmoil, and increased scrutiny from congressional committees and oversight bodies, government leaders must embrace and implement sound risk management practices to avoid potentially embarrassing missteps and the erosion of public trust.

Managing Risk and Performance: A Guide for Government Decision Makers is a comprehensive professional resource that will inform and empower you to:

• Understand and appreciate the need for sound risk management by Government Decision Makers
• Consider and assess the major types of risk that could prevent your agency from achieving its mission
• Build a risk management process and agency protocols that help stakeholders understand the nature of risk-reward tradeoffs and their consequences in major decisions

This book directly addresses the unique obstacles faced by government agencies in attempting to identify, assess, and ultimately mitigate the vast and disparate risks that threaten them. Stanton and Webster bring their decades of collective government agency and private sector risk management experience to the fore and provide you with real-world insights and instructions for successful risk management within government agencies. The four main sections of the book address critical risk management concepts as they specifically apply to government agencies, including:

• Building a risk management team that bridges silos within an organization
• Understanding Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) for government agencies
• Government risk management in times of crisis
• Risk management successes and failures from the financial crisis

Managing Risk and Performance: A Guide for Government Decision Makers is intended to help readers build and cultivate the necessary risk management strategies before, rather than after, their agencies experience a potentially painful lesson.

From the Inside Flap

Policy makers and government risk managers must answer the question, “What are the risks that could prevent my agency from achieving its mission and objectives?” Within a single government agency, any number of diverse risks may be present, from terrorist attacks to failure to comply with legal or policy requirements to the unexpected loss of talented employees. As is the case with major global corporations, the agencies of the U.S. government must be acutely aware of the omnipresent risks that potentially threaten their missions, and effective policies must be implemented to mitigate those risks.

Sound risk management empowers a government agency to be more agile and efficient as it navigates increasingly turbulent waters in the areas of domestic politics, budgetary constraints, and media and congressional scrutiny, to name a few. Properly executed risk management strategies are also capable of delivering bottom-line benefits to government agencies in the form of cost savings and increased operational efficiency. The challenge facing agency heads, risk managers, and public sector decision makers is finding the proper balance within their risk management strategy, one that ensures that risks to the agency’s mission are neutralized without impeding the critical functions and productivity of the agency.

In Managing Risk and Performance: A Guide for Government Decision Makers, Thomas H. Stanton and Douglas W. Webster introduce you to the fundamental principles of risk management strategies and how to apply them within government agencies. With real-world examples—of successes and failures—from within the federal government and direct lessons from the global financial crisis, Stanton and Webster provide a comprehensive road map for creating, managing, and supporting sound risk management programs within government agencies.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1118658140
• ISBN 13: 9781118658147
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Stanton Thomas, Webster Douglas W.