Risk Governance: A Way to Promote Ethical Business in Organizations

SYNOPSIS

Regulators seek to make organizations more ethical by imposing requirements for risk governance. However, the academic and practitioner literature questions whether regulators’ objective has been met. In this paper, based on a field study in the financial services industry, we describe innovative practices in risk governance at three companies that seem to have succeeded in mitigating some of their ethical issues. We thereby contribute to the practice of risk governance and show that risk governance can indeed foster ethics.

Data Availability: Data consists of our confidential notes from the field visits.

JEL Classifications: M40; K20; G32.