Systemic Risk Management: A Practice Approach to the Systemic Management of Project Risk

Abstract

Risk management is a practice. It consists of activities which ought to be focused and integrated. This chapter argues for a systemic practice of project risk management. It shows what can be done with a systemic approach to improve risk management on different levels in different ways, and how systems thinking meets the challenges of increasing project complexity and the embedded risks. First, the benefits of a systemic perspective on projects in observing and describing actuality and possibility are explored, to provide a wider range of perspectives on the project itself and alternative ways to detect risk. The second part discusses why it is critical to establish risk management as an independent key practice in projects. A third part is concerned with proposing elements of risk management as a distinct project within projects, projects to detect, to mitigate and to fix risks.