Patterns of Managerial Risk Perceptions: Exploring the Dimensions of Managers' Accepted Risks

This paper investigates variations in managerial perceptions of organisational risk. The objective of this research is to establish an understanding of the issues that concern managers in modern organisations, where those concerns might be rooted, and what impact they may have on organisational performance and, to a lesser extent, on the broader industrial and societal setting. The paper presents an investigative framework which is used to explore managerial perceptions of risk. The results show that managers tend to focus on a narrow band of organisational risks, with a particular emphasis on a range of competitive risks and on those risks which arise from the processes of management. Managers display a reluctance to consider and act upon externally generated risks, and this will have an impact upon their ability to generate comprehensive contingency plans. The picture of risk that emerges suggests that managers have a low opinion of their ability to intervene in decision-making with regard to risk, although there is a sense of reassurance that they have done all that they can. As a result, there is a sense in which responsibility for risk is attributed upward through levels of the organisation.