Seminar: Risk Management in a Risk-Filled World

Learning Outcomes

After completing this exercise, students will be able to:

examine articles about issues in risk management to identify important questions for discussion about defining problems and finding solutions
moderate online discussions using strategies such as requesting elaboration, summarizing, redirecting, and identifying relationships
summarize discussions about a topic, identifying the key themes explored and acknowledging multiple perspectives.

Overview

In Units 2 – 10, you will take turns leading a discussion about risk management. Your instructor will assign a risk-management topic to you in Unit 1. During the unit for that topic, discussion leaders are responsible for researching in advance, identifying good articles for discussion, and leading with discussion questions. Discussion participants do additional research and suggest solutions or perspectives on the initial questions. At the end of the discussion, discussion leaders will create a thematic summary of the solutions.

Procedure

Unit 1: Preparation

Read the announcement posted by your instructor. Make sure you are clear on which discussion you are leading in advance. If you have a scheduling conflict, contact your instructor as soon as possible, and seek out another student to trade dates with.
Ask questions about the group-discussion process in the Unit 1 discussion forum. Make sure you clearly understand your responsibilities as a discussion leader and a discussion participant.

Discussion Leaders

The unit before your discussion, research the risk topic assigned to you. Identify three good resources describing the impact of that risk on business from sources such as The Wall Street Journal or the SCAD Jen Library research databases.

On Day 1 of your assigned unit, make an introduction post to start discussion. Your introduction post should do the following:

List how your topic relates to these five major risk-impact areas:

people and knowledge
reputation
financial and economic
organizational and cultural
societal, political, and environmental.

Provide actual examples of risk failure in this topic.
Provide actual examples of successful risk mitigation and/or elimination in this topic.
Pose three or more open-ended discussion questions or problems for your peers to research and discuss. Good discussion questions should require more than one-sentence answers. Suggest open issues or problems, not conclusions.

During your assigned unit, watch and moderate the discussion. Try the following when moderating:

Ask students to elaborate on interesting ideas.
Gently redirect to keep the discussion on the topic.
Ask for additional perspectives that have not been explored.
Identify interesting relationships between threads as they develop.
Utilize your critical thinking and systemic approach to explore the concepts developed by your peers.

Check in with your instructor if you need help with leading the discussion. Be courteous, polite, and supportive in your moderation. Your goal as a leader is to encourage participation from other students, not expand on your introduction post.

On Day 7 of your assigned unit, create and post a thematic summary of the discussion. Your goal is to synthesize the multiple perspectives into an overall picture of your topic. Organize your summary by theme rather than by participant or chronological order. Write about 1 – 3 paragraphs per theme. Quote from the discussion, but don’t just outline the discussion. Try to acknowledge all of the expressed perspectives in your summary.

Save your summary in DOCX format, named as follows:

lastnamefirstinitial_seminar_summary.docx
for example, John Doe would name the file “doej_seminar_summary.docx”.

Submit this file via the Submissions link in the course menu by 11:59 p.m. U.S. EST/EDT on Day 7 of your assigned unit.
Also, post your finished work for peer review to your assigned discussion forum by 11:59 p.m. U.S. EST/EDT on Day 7 of your assigned unit.

Discussion Participants

During units you are not leading discussions, you are still expected to participate.

Read the introduction post and linked articles posted by the discussion leader for each topic. Then, respond to the articles and the questions by 11:59 p.m. U.S. EST/EDT on Day 3 of the current unit. Your responses should be supported by additional evidence from course readings or readings introduced in the discussion.

After making your first post, respond to your peers with additional perspectives, analysis, or follow-up questions. In your follow-up posts, practice the critical thinking skills introduced in Unit 1. Try to make your final responses by 11:59 p.m. U.S. EST/EDT on Day 6 of the current unit.

Discussion Topics

Unit	Risk Topic	Examples
Unit 2	Financial	Loss of market, sales, access to capital, too much debt, no R&D or innovation, shrinking margins, pensions, poor cash flow, access to credit . . .
	Geopolitical	Impact from war, government takeover or intervention, famine, disease, trade . . .
Unit 3	Health and Safety	Poor work environments, product contamination, injuries, misuse of product, manufacturing safety . . .
	Reputation and Brand	Consumer complaints, social media impact, company viability, product failure or misuse, actions by leadership, actions by employees, actions by politicians . . .
Unit 4	Security	Plant takeover, product tampering, employee security in and out of work, espionage, sabotage, employee theft, competitor attack or theft . . .
	Cybersecurity	Firewall breaches, employee-data leaks, customer-data breaches, privacy security and controls, technology innovation, internal controls . . .
Unit 5	Macroeconomics	Recession, zero interest rates, debt crisis, central bank actions, economic crisis, currency devaluation, trade war, demographic changes . . .
	Human Capital	Lack of talent, lack of labor, poor training, forced layoffs, automation, poor benefit management, employee legal actions, labor union relations, sexual harassment, failure to provide objective diversity and opportunities . . .
Unit 6	Career	Layoffs, leadership change, technology makes skills and knowledge obsolete, bad boss, bad coworker, relationship impacts, dual career, children, false accusations, poor judgments . . .
	Environment	Sustainability, pollution, inadvertent release that impacts people and environment, nondisclosure of issues, energy impact, climate change, exposure on health . . .
Unit 7	Technology	Disruptive new product or tech, artificial intelligence, unplanned automation, robotics, information-flow changes, invention or innovation that impacts business . . .
	Legal, Political, and Governmental	Corruption attempts, conflict or support of policy, regulatory actions, new laws, product liability, regulatory compliance, change in political landscape, employment impacts, tax impact, voter ramifications . . .
Unit 8	Business Continuity	Supply-chain disruption, supplier failure or bankruptcy, natural disaster, government restrictions or trade limitations, infrastructure failure, plant fire, loss of key leaders or sites . . .
	Freedom and Markets	Price controls; capital controls; restriction of distribution; easing of regulations; new markets; market controls or elimination; restrictions on people, travel, or employment; state-owned enterprises; subsidies; new tax structures; government barriers to entry; corruption . . .
Unit 9	Crisis Management	Poor response to incidents, leadership plan or impact, natural and unnatural disaster responses, real-time issues, product tampering, employee or community impacts, media and PR management or skills . . .
	Operating Performance	Labor slowdowns, equipment failures, failure to invest in maintenance, capacity planning, unexpected growth or shrinkage of market . . .
Unit 10	Unit 10 for All: Existential Threats: Choose One and Post on Discussion Board	Aliens land, asteroid impact, zombie apocalypse, artificial intelligence, singularity, warp drive developed, quantum computing for all . . .

Grading

Leadership of seminar discussions will be graded according to the criteria specified in the Risk-Management Seminar Discussion Leadership, which can be found in Grades on the course menu. For details on grading, refer to the Syllabus.