Integrating ethics and risk management

Abstract

Traditional business and risk analysis is designed to protect the organization, and thus is self-focused. Ethics is concerned with appropriate behavior towards the `other'. Is risk management ethical if it protects itself (the organization) but may leave its customers, neighbors, society and/or our environment in distress? This paper evaluates ethical and risk management papers from business, engineering and IT against a proposed ethical maturity model for the risk management process, defined towards an ideal. It also proposes an enhanced quantitative risk analysis method to implement a higher ethical level, by considering the `other'.