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ERM Initiative Launches New Website

Since its founding in 2003, the ERM Initiative has sought to be an internationally recognized thought leader in enterprise risk management, with a particular focus on the integration of risk oversight in strategy and corporate governance.

“The ERM Initiative’s website has been a core part of our strategy to provide ERM knowledge to the world,” said Mark Beasley, Deloitte Professor of Enterprise Risk Management and director of the initiative. The ERM Initiative’s website has evolved into a leading information internet portal for the delivery and hosting of ERM knowledge resources, he said.

The website currently includes abstracts of over 200 articles, white papers and research studies. It also includes summaries of the 37 ERM Roundtables that the initiative has hosted in the past five years.

“These resources are available for free download as part of our mission as a land grant university,” Beasley said. The site also provides information about its upcoming workshops as well as our popular ERM Roundtables.

“The ERM Initiative is generally on the first page of a Google search of the term ‘enterprise risk management’,” he said. “In fiscal year 2008-2009, over 13,000 people visited our website at least once. The dramatic redesign of the ERM Initiative’s website significantly expands the usability of the site. It will make it easier to find by those seeking to learn more about ERM and will allow for sophisticated searches of the ERM-related resources found on our website.”

The initiative’s ERM in the News, a twice-monthly electronic newsletter, sends the latest ERM-related news, article summaries and events from the website to its subscribers. “Seventeen newsletters have been sent since October 2008, highlighting more than 60 article abstracts and Roundtable summaries located on our website, as well as providing links to over 40 ERM news items or speeches from top regulators and ERM professionals,” Beasley said.

ERM Faculty Team

In addition to Beasley, the ERM Initiative includes Executive Director Bonnie Hancock and Associate Director Bruce Branson, and ERM Initiative Program Coordinator Jess Brooks.

In addition to its robust website and popular ERM Roundtables, the initiative’s team of faculty has advised boards and C-suite executives in entities spanning several industries on the fundamentals of ERM and key success factors for ensuring their risk oversight is value adding. They have also developed and conducted executive education workshops and professional development programs in collaboration with the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks.

“These national and state-wide workshops are primarily targeted to individuals serving on boards of directors or as C-level executives who report directly to boards,” Beasley said. The AICPA workshops are held in New York, NY twice annually, with the next workshop scheduled for November 5 and 6, 2009. The Advanced Bank Directors’ workshops, offered in conjunction with the NC Commissioner of Banks, are also held twice annually, at The Grandover Resort in Greensboro, with the next workshop scheduled for November 12 and 13, 2009. Details are available under the Executive Education link on the new site.

The ERM Initiative also supports the development and delivery of three MBA courses that provide students in the college’s Jenkins Graduate School of Management core knowledge of ERM concepts and best practices. See details under Graduate Courses on the new site.

Enrollment for the “Overview of ERM” course grew from 20 in fall 2007 to 40 in fall 2008, with more than 50 enrolled in the summer and fall 2009 semesters. This course has now been approved for the college’s MBA finance concentration and students in the NC State Jenkins Master of Accounting program can work towards an ERM concentration as part of their graduate course of study.

“Our students in this course have the opportunity to hear invited speakers who speak about the ‘real-world’ ERM implementation challenges they face in their day-to-day positions within their companies and organizations,” Beasley said. “These students also have opportunities to attend our ERM Roundtables and to interact with other ERM professionals, such as our ERM Initiative Advisory Board which hosted reception lat fall with our Jenkins graduate students and graduate students in NC State’s financial mathematics program.

The Initiative also supported the development of two one-hour MBA elective courses that collectively enrolled 71 MBA students from the NC State Jenkins MBA part time for working professionals program. Two Master of Accounting students won second place in the college’s first Leadership and Innovation student project competition held in April 2009, for their case presentation of a risk simulation project completed in the “Risk Measurements Tools” course taught by Paul Bergey, Associate Professor of Information Technology.

Supporting ERM Research

The ERM initiative also supports faculty research. In the past year, the college’s faculty working with the initiative conducted a survey-based research project sponsored by the AICPA. Based on the data obtained, professors Beasley, Branson, and Hancock developed a research monograph, Report on the Current State of Enterprise Risk Management which is being distributed by the AICPA through its website for Business and Industry and through the ERM Initiative website. A one-page executive summary has been sent to selected members of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Secuyrity and Exchange Commission, and selected journalists.The authors have made several national conference presentations and webinars highlighting the key findings of this study and other ERM developments, and an article based on the study appeared in the September 2009 issue of the Journal of Accountancy.

In addition, a recently published article in Grant Thornton’s Corporate Governor Series entitled “Enterprise Risk Management: Creating Value in a Volatile Economy” highlights the ERM Initiative and the findings from the AICPA-sponsored research.

Research completed by professors Beasley, Don Pagach, and Richard Warr titled, “Information Conveyed in Hiring Announcements of Senior Executives Overseeing Enterprise-Wide Risk Management Processes,” was published in the Journal of Accounting, Auditing, and Finance. Faculty also published ERM articles in the Journal of Forensic Accounting and Internal Auditor. ERM Initiative faculty also completed two research projects that were previously funded by NC State IEED and the IBM Center for the Business of Government.

“In light of the tremendous attention now focused on risk oversight resulting from the current economic crisis, the ERM Initiative leadership team has been developing a series of articles and white papers examining the role of the board of directors in overseeing management’s approach to risk management and the entity’s top risk exposures,” Beasley said.

“One article is currently under editorial review at the MIT’s Sloan Management Review, and a separate white paper focused on the board and senior management’s role in enterprise risk oversight has been developed by the team for issuance by COSO – The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission – which is globally recognized for its development of Enterprise Risk Management – Integrated Framework. A related four-page summary was prepared by the college’s ERM Initiative team and issued on September 1, 2009 by COSO for widespread distribution by the COSO founding organizations (AAA, AICPA, FEI, IMA, and IIA), which collectively have about 500,000 members.

Dig Deeper

  • ERM Initiative
  • Mark Beasley, Deloitte Professor of Enterprise Risk Management, and director, ERM Initiative
  • Bruce Branson, professor, Department of Accounting and associate director, ERM Initiative
  • Bonnie Hancock, lecturer, Department of Accounting, and executive director, ERM Initiative