Who Reads What Most Often?: A Survey of Enterprise Risk Management Literature Read by Risk Executives

This study provides the results of a survey on the most important risk literature read by executives working in the area of enterprise risk management, and it highlights excellent opportunities for academics to closely collaborate with practitioners to conduct research in these key areas of need. We discuss problems and challenges risk executives have encountered that were not addressed in the literature. Overall, the key findings of our survey are as follows: First, surprisingly, COSO (Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission) was not considered a key source of information and guidance. Second, major challenges still remain for new implementers. Third, much more work is needed in the areas of research and case studies so that risk executives can learn from the experiences of others who have successfully implemented enterprise risk management. Fourth, many areas clearly remain to be explored and discussed before a common understanding or methodology for enterprise risk management could be considered to be in place; and fifth, we find that experienced risk executives are not only much more familiar with the literature, but they also find publications about ‘risk in general’ very useful at early and advanced stages of enterprise risk management implementation.