ABSTRACT
In the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, continuing corporate debacles, and ongoing corporate governance calls for the appointment of chief risk officers (CROs) and risk management committees, it is important to understand what role risk officers do or may play. Bank regulators have long been creating incentives for the sector to adopt ERM. Corporate-governance trendsetters, such as COSO and the Turnbull Committee, advocated ERM as a process that would ensure the successful implementation of strategies by any organisation. Research carried out at two major banks in London between 2006 and 2011 - that is, before, during and after the financial crisis - made it possible to observe how risk managers of equal ability and potential to exert influence come to have greater or lesser influence on their organisations' decision makers. Critical academic studies have highlighted the supply-side growth of the risk management industry that draws a seemingly inexhaustible roster of concerns into a fluid new class of managerial objects.
