Connecting risk, management and organisational goals: integrating risk with organisations’ systems to enhance performance and competitive advantage

Risk influences organisational structures and processes in ways that have consequences for performance and competitive advantage. Prior research suggests actors engage in strategic risk positioning that orients organisations in relation to uncertainty to create beneficial outcomes, including firm survival. Although strategic risk positioning takes place within the social and structural contexts that are established elements of organisations’ systems, the theorising is not integrated. Rather, theorising about organisations’ systems characterises them as comprising strategy, structure, culture, leadership, and high-performance work practices, with different models explaining different elements and their connections with risk. By connecting studies of risk positioning and organisations’ systems, I develop the concept of a risk position that is a consequence of managers’ agentic choices and actions arising from combinations of risk appetite and risk management that create exposure to risk in relation to goals. My analysis shows how the risk position concept provides managers with language and meaning to enable risk positioning that involves intentional shifts in system elements. These shifts create orientations to both risk and goals in ways that enhance performance and competitive advantage. Thus, my modelling contributes to studies of organisational risk and organisations’ systems.