ERM and strategic planning: a change in paradigm

Abstract

In 2014, the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) announced that they would embark on the revision of their Enterprise Risk Management—Integrated Framework (2004). After 2 years of deliberations and a 6-month evaluation period, COSO has finally released its Enterprise Risk Management: Integrating Strategy and Performance on September 6, 2017. One of the primary issues that arose after the release of the original Framework was the awareness that organizations have failed to adopt an integrated treatment of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and strategic planning, termed Strategic Risk Management (SRM). This is especially troubling as the benefits of SRM have been recognized by academics, practitioners, and regulators. The new Framework takes significant steps to promote a mind shift, or paradigm change, to a more integrative approach to ERM and strategic planning. Pierce and Goldstein, in their previous work (in: 14th global conference on business and economics, Oxford, UK, 1–2 October, 2016), highlighted language and diagrams in the original Framework that may have led to the siloed treatment of both processes. In this paper, we examine changes in the new Framework to determine whether they sufficiently address these changes in order to move organizations more toward Strategic Risk Management.