What is Risk Management?
Risk management is a process through which an organisation identifies, assesses and controls threats, if any, to its earnings and capitals. The source of threats could be due to a variety of causes like uncertainties in finances, legal liabilities, errors in strategy by the management, accident or a natural disaster. For digitised organisations, protection of data and threats to their IT security are of major concern.
Thus they have adopted risk management plans so that they can combat the threats against their important information and identify them to take strict actions. The importance of international business is huge for global organisations and they cannot take the risk of unexpected events causing major mayhem to their earnings. Risk management helps in this regard and helps them prepare for unexpected events with fewer software risks and extra costs.
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Strategies of Risk Management and its Processes
One of the principal features of international business is the risk management process, which comprises several risk management plans combined.
Establishing Context:
It is important to understand the circumstances under which the remainder of the process shall take place. Before the evaluation of risk, the criteria to be used must be established, and how the analysis structure will be carried out must be defined.
Identifying Risks:
The company needs to identify potential risks which may act as a stumbling block and cast a negative impact on the company projects and earnings.
Analysing Risks:
After identifying the possible risks, the company then needs to understand the odds of their occurrences and how much damage they may cost. The main aim of risk analysis is to get an idea about every instance of risk and the influence it may have on the projects and ambitions of the company.
Assessing and Evaluating Risks:
After determining the likelihood of occurrence of the risk along with its consequences, the company should focus on whether they are equipped enough to accept that risk to move forward.
Mitigating Risks:
The companies rank the risks according to their severity and look to come up with a strategy to tackle them if the day comes. For this purpose, companies use many risk controls to develop a plan which includes various risk mitigation processes, tactics to prevent risks as well as contingency plans.
Monitoring Risks:
The risks, as well as the plans to tackle those risks, must be followed up at regular intervals so that specific actions can be taken in case there are any changes needed to be made. Companies should also always keep an eye on new risks.
Communication and Consulting:
The risk management process should be carried out in the presence of the internal as well as external shareholders and they should be consulted before every step.
Approaches to Risk Management
Companies can adopt different strategies for different risks following their identification and implementation of the risk management process. It has a major impact on maintaining the importance of the international business environment.
Avoiding Risk:
Eliminating risk is a near-impossible task. As a result, companies tend to take the strategy of minimising risks to the maximum attainable level so that they cannot damage the company reputation and projects.
Reducing Risk:
Often companies come up with a plan to reduce the risks on the processes of the company considerably. This can be attained by making certain adjustments to some aspects of the plan or reducing the scope of occurrence.
Sharing Risk:
In some occasions, the consequences of risk may be shared with the participants of the project, other departments of the business, with a business partner or someone outside the business. As a result of risk sharing, the company does not have to go through a tough time alone.
Retaining Risk:
Sometimes companies take the bold decision of accepting the risks for the better good. They do so if they believe the profits or stakes of the project are higher and could be beneficial for the company and they have the funds to deal with the damages.
Conclusion
The importance of international management depends largely upon the risk management process, which helps in maintaining the significance of the international business environment. It helps to face the unexpected without causing much negative impact on the company. Thus it helps in maintaining the relevance of international business across the world.
FAQs on Risk Management
1. What are the Advantages of Risk Management?
Ans: An organisation may be able to save fortunes by implementing a risk management plan and be aware of the risks before they occur so that they are well - equipped to deal with them if the time arrives. Besides this, the risk management plan also has a few other benefits:
It can offer a safe and secure work environment for the employees of the company, and we all know the significance of the international business environment.
Business operations become a lot more stable as a result besides decreasing the legal liabilities.
It assures protection against events which may cause damage to the company interests.
It keeps the staff as well as the assets safe from potential damage.
It helps in establishing the requirements regarding insurances and saves the company from paying premiums which are not necessary.
2. Are There any Limitations of Risk Management?
Ans: The importance of international business management depends largely on risk management, which has several benefits. But it comes with its set of limitations.
Most of these risk analysis techniques require a lot of data which is not always easily available. Laying hands upon data could prove to be costly without any guarantee of reliability. Unreliable data could lead to disastrous results.
Inability to analyse proves to be the major disadvantage of this process. Computer software is not adept at understanding the results of the simulations and the need for skilled personnel is thus necessary. The wrong analysis could harm the company.
The risk management process provides a false sense of security as it focuses on past data and not the future. The company may have to face risks which have not occurred in the past.
Risk management gives companies the false idea that they have had an eye on every potential risk and can deal with them. But they cannot deal with unexpected risks as they have no data regarding it and thus have a false sense of security.
Risk management is sometimes immature as the company policies are often not developed enough and fail to evaluate correctly.