The risk management of everything

Abstract

I recently decided that there was no longer space to store 20 years worth of Accountancy and Accountancy Age. Prior to disposal I reviewed all the back issues for articles of particular note worth saving. In the course of this process, a number of things were striking. First, articles on financial reporting were conspicuous in the 1980s, and in the 1990s it was auditing which seemed to be the main object of discussion. Second, risk and risk management begin to receive regular exposure only from about the mid‐1990s onwards. In particular, the late 1990s reveal an increasing commentary on practice management and risks to professional partnerships.

Credit rating agencies and the sovereign debt crisis: Performing the politics of creditworthiness through risk and uncertainty

“…Hegemonic risk discourse is at the centre of this depoliticization process (Dean, 1999;Power, 2004).…”

Critical perspectives on “manufactured” risks arising from Eurocentric business practices in Africa

“…Warren (1999) and Löfstedt (2009) conceptualised the idea of risk as an absence of trust in élites and institutions. The absence of trust, therefore, creates both institutional and reputational risk Power, 2004Power, , 2007. The reality of institutional and reputational risks propagates distrustful, individualised and dis-embedded citizens, which accelerate crises of legitimacy, credibility, accountability and sustainability of states and governments (Lyons, Lowery and De Hoog, 1992).…”

Travelling risks: How did nanotechnology become a risk in India and South Africa?

“…Rothstein and others (Power 2004;Rothstein, Huber, and Gaskell 2006;Huber and Rothstein 2013) have for instance observed how in 'the developed West' more and more practices are framed in terms of risk, 'colonizing' the public agenda, as it were, in order to reflexively manage institutional threats. But the contextdependent historical emergence of risk discourses does provide a valid starting point for understanding what factors facilitate or hamper new objects to be understood in terms of risk and to understand how both risk and the new context change in the process.…”