3: Risk Management

While there have been decades of research focusing on risk assessment and a plethora of risk assessment approaches, tools, measures and guidelines created inter- and intra-professionally, the literature on risk management is comparatively scant. There are an increasing number of guidelines and approaches to risk management being developed and practice-led approaches are, arguably, more advanced than those being discussed within the academic literature. This has its strengths – practice-focus, accessibility for practitioners, applicability and feasibility for practice. There are also weaknesses, such as a lack of a theoretical focus, lack of clarity over philosophical underpinnings and their implications for practice, fragmentation across and within public sector professions due to the lack of gold standard being driven from the academic literature. This chapter will look at how risk management has evolved over the years. It will discuss what risk management is and should be in terms of public sector, its fit with risk assessment and the points mentioned previously. The aim of this chapter is not to create new academic frameworks or to suggest a single approach to risk management; it presents an in-depth overview of theory and approaches which are relevant to public sector risk practice. Good risk management requires strong practice-relevant approaches with an underpinning understanding of risk management theory.