Empowered Enterprise Risk Management

CHAPTER 1Introduction to Empowered Enterprise Risk Management

A CLEAR SIGN THAT YOU are a helicopter parent, according to online sources, is developing a bad back from constantly stooping down and following your toddler's every step. Helicopter parents are, as it were, those constantly trying to identify and remove threats to their child's safety. They hover above the playground, ready to interfere at a moment's notice, and generally put a variety of restrictions on the child's activities to remove any notion of danger. Such a highly regimented style of parenting is in sharp contrast with the much more relaxed approach that was common not too long ago. As recently as the 1980s, even in that epitome of the safety‐first approach, in Sweden it was not uncommon to see small children standing up between the front seats of the car while the car was being driven. Their parents would not necessarily have been viewed as irresponsible by other adults or reflected much themselves on the possibility that they might have been taking unacceptable risks.

The helicopter parent is just one caricature describing a broader current in society, namely a desire towards identifying and controlling risks that might affect our well‐being. Sociologists have even referred to our modern world as a ‘risk society', meaning a society that is increasingly preoccupied with the future and any risks that it might bring (Beck, 1992). It turns out that modernity has ushered in a wide variety of man‐made risks ...