This study examines the notion that the term “Industrialisation” within the banking system is not clearly understood, nor its impact on the whole value added chain. The goal is to establish a clear definition of the term “Industrialisation” in an international context and study the manifestation and impact of Industrialisation across the length of the banking value added chain. Four indicators of Industrialisation (standardisation, automation, specialisation, quality management) were identified through a systematic literature review. The work focuses on one of the ‘three pillars’ of the German banking system: the East German Savings Banks Group. The research uses a homogenous multi method approach utilizing statistical financial information, existing documentary evidence and questionnaires. The data (quantitative and qualitative) was derived from files held by the national association on the 48 savings banks, and from 36 quantitative questionnaires returned by respondent banks. The 36 complete data sets were systematically combined using a comprehensive regression approach. The data was used to test three over-arching hypotheses, each relating to connections between the (generally understood) four stages of the value-added chain, activities related to each stage and indicators of banking success. The research clearly identified that: 1) Industrialisation dominates the savings banks value added chain. 2) Industrialisation augments financial outcomes and ‘perceived success’ in product development, marketing, settlement and transactions. 3) Outsourcing functions are negatively correlated to banking success in these value added stages. 4) Success in risk management was shown to be contingent on settlement and transactions, but no other activities. Automated services, such as self-service terminals and internet banking, are successful in the areas of settlements, transactions, marketing and customer relations. Increasing automation and standardisation can increase the perceived and quantitative measured success within the value added chain. Conclusions & Implications: The developed model extends knowledge in the area of banking and Industrialisation, showing increasing interaction between stages along the value-added chain. The closer the stages, the stronger the effects. The model provides a guide for managerial attention in adding value through Industrialisation techniques in the industry. The management implications of the study are that the savings banks should focus on their core competencies in providing a holistic in-house service in routine transactions, as well as supporting exceptional financing and investment tasks for their clients. To enhance the efficiency of Industrialisation across the value added chain, savings banks should find standards and routines contributing to Industrialisation success in risk management, and seek to comprehensively link the function of risk management to the value added chain stages.

The purpose of this report is to make a contribution to the South African Post Office Technology division. This is achieved by starting with a number of fundamental theoretical principles in related disciplines. Risk management is proposed to the management in an attempt to increase the success rate of information technology projects. Concentrating on methodology is not the only answer. Management should accept that risks are part of the development process and should be managed. Even though risks appear throughout the development life cycle, management should realise that the starting phase of any systems development life cycle is one of the most crucial events. There is a saying in Afrikaans: "Goed begin is half gewin". Meaning that if a project starts on a healthy basis, the rest should be clean sailing. This report should provide a useful starting point for further empirical analysis since it provides an overall theoretical framework for the systems development life cycle. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Graduate School of Management / unrestricted

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Nathan P. Hendricks / Risk and uncertainty are inherent in agriculture especially when lack of precipitation needed for crop production is common. Precipitation in the High Plains is highly variable. To supplement precipitation, the Ogallala Aquifer, a large underground water storage reservoir, was developed for irrigation. However, as the saturated thickness of the aquifer decreases, the rate at which water can be extracted (i.e., well capacities) decreases. Limited well capacities induce risk in agricultural production because producers may not be able to irrigate sufficiently in dry years. This study’s objective was to develop a method to assist producers in comparing alternative irrigation management strategies in the face of risk due to a limited well capacity. The objective was accomplished by simulating average net returns for 172 different irrigation strategies across 30 years (1986-2015) of historical weather (Kansas Mesonet 2016). Management strategies include different combinations of corn and wheat production with full irrigation, moderate irrigation, deficit irrigation and dryland production. The three risk measures were Value at Risk (VaR), expected shortfall, and standard deviation. The risk-return tradeoff is estimated for management strategies for two well capacities, 300 GPM (gallons per minute) and 600 GPM. Estimating these risk measures can help producers better evaluate the optimal management strategy compared to the approach of only equating average net returns.

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This thesis explores risk management practices in global manufacturing investment. It reflects the growing internationalisation of manufacturing and the increasing complexity and fragmentation of manufacturing systems. Issues of risk management have become increasingly important in financial and company governance contexts not least because of growing international concerns about the consequences of unregulated risk. However while significant progress has been made in the awareness and articulation of financial risk there appeared to be little evidence of systematic management of risks associated with the globalisation of manufacturing despite the fact that ill-advised internationalisation projects could risk companies' futures. Investment risk management practice has evolved as risk analysis in global manufacturing investment from theoretical and practice perspectives. The need to actively manage risk has tended to be lost by the adoption of complex financial risk analysis methods in industrial investment projects. The approach adopted in this research was to undertake detailed case investigations in a cross section of industrial businesses at different levels of maturity in order to observe current practices, identify common principles and to seek to synthesise systematic approaches to risk management where appropriate. These field studies were conducted against a background of a detailed review of the literature and practice in finance and consulting and a detailed review of literature and practice in manufacturing strategy and system design. The key findings are as follows: (i) Elements of global manufacturing risk are managed by a variety of implicit and explicit methods, typically embedded in strategic and financial evaluations. There are no widely recognised comprehensive and systematic approaches to the analysis and mitigation of risks associated with global manufacturing investments. (ii) A broad review and analysis of global manufacturing investment projects identified key categories of investment risks and key dimensions of investment risk management. (iii) A very preliminary classification of global manufacturers from an investment risk management practice perspective, which may be helpful to companies in assessing their own risk management capabilities and behaviours. (iv) A prototype investment risk management process architecture is proposed based upon the key research findings. It presents a structured approach to the key risk management tasks and demonstrates their generality across a range of industrial environment. This provides confidence though not conclusive evidence that these methods might be applicable across a broad spectrum of manufacturing industries. The research findings extend the current understanding of risk management into the domain of global manufacturing strategy and provide the basis for more comprehensive and systematic assessment of risk in global investment projects. Further research will be required to validate the proposed risk management process and to explore the particular risks associated with different sectors, technologies, and business contexts.

Risk has become a key concept in social theory and has had a significant impact across academic disciplines including criminology. On the one hand, several criminologists argue that the rise of risk has fundamentally reconfigured the operations of courts, corrections, and policing. Many claim that, over the last few decades, crime control has moved away from the old rehabilitative and retributive approaches of the past and towards more actuarial approaches based on risk management – crime has become a risk to be managed in aggregate terms rather than a moral transgression in need of rectification. On the other hand, while risk-based approaches to governing crime have grown significantly, cultural criminologists and sociologists of sport have noted a heightened emphasis on risk-taking by urban graffiti writers, illegal street racers, extreme sports enthusiasts, and illicit drug users. For these people, the risk-averse logic of actuarial governance – risk as potential harm to be avoided – is inverted such that risk is positively embraced for the excitement it affords. What is particularly characteristic about the present, then, is that a politics of risk management is colliding with a culture of risk-taking. In attempts to make sense of this puzzling paradox, in this thesis I offer a primarily theoretical investigation of the dominant approaches used in the study of risk management (chp. I) and risk taking (chp. II & III) in sociology and criminology. After exploring how the rise of risk has reconfigured crime control over the last quarter century in Chapter one, in Chapter two I develop the argument that orthodox criminology provides two dominant images of criminal risk-taking. While dispositional theories explain criminal risk-taking as the pathological behaviour of individuals with particular body types, low-self control, or of lower-class origin, situational theories conceive of criminal risk-taking as the (ir)rational decisions of necessarily risk-averse actors. Despite differences between dispositional and situational theories, both leave no room for risk-taking that is controlled and intentional. In Chapter three I enlist the work of Jack Katz on the seductions of crime and of Stephen Lyng on the sociology of risk-taking to develop a third, cultural approach to risk-taking that is voluntary and cross-class. I illustrate how, for Katz’s and Lyng’s actors, risk is approached as a challenge rather than seen as a deterrent. Lastly, I add to the historicity of the cultural approach to risk-taking by tracing its roots in a romantic worldview that arose out of 19th century disenchantment with the bureaucratic rationalism and alienation of capitalist modernity. In conclusion, I summarize the main argument of the thesis and outline some potential avenues for future research.

The world of today is increasingly dependant on a functional, globalized economy. The defence and security establishments’ reliance on supplies and logistics is not new. First responders rely on many tools and systems that are critical to their endeavours. Somewhat disjoint at first glance, these domains share a common need for complex physical or logistical infrastructures such as power plants, ports, supply chains, to name a few examples.All of these are potentially vulnerable to attacks, disruptions, breakdowns, or other activities that disable the infrastructure and consequently cause important physical or economic damage. An obligation exists to protect these critical infrastructures and a decision support system that is able to detect, identify, and mitigate the risk of unwanted events would be invaluable in preventing the disastrous consequences of compromised infrastructure.This thesis explores the design and application of such a system. It starts with a pre-existing, actively researched risk management framework and proposes a methodology to apply it in new contexts, as well as contributions to provide the framework with the ability to solve new problems. Relevant case studies in critical infrastructure protection are presented, as well as applications of the developed methodology with the proposed modifications when suitable. Simulations, results, and insightful discussions are provided for each of the case studies. Finally, research trends, future work, and a conclusion are given, completing this thesis.

This research studies the effect of enterprise risk management (ERM) on financial indicators that effect the shareholder value of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed companies during the economic downturn of 2008 – 2010.Enterprise risk management is the organisational process of identifying risks that affect the company’s ability to achieve its objectives; the financial indicators that effect shareholder value include the publicly traded share price, the dividends paid out to shareholders, the volatility of the share price, earnings and the price to earnings (P/E) ratio of the organisation.The research data was gathered utilising an enterprise risk management maturity survey and publicly available company financial data.The data was analysed for correlations between the ERM principles and the financial data; the outcome shows that a correlation exists between a single ERM principle (risk architecture) and Shareholder value when an economic downturn occurs.This indicates that the structure of an organisation’s enterprise risk management process is the best indicator of shareholder value protection when and economic downturn occurs, and is more significant than the way an organisation executes its risk strategy or manages its risk protocols. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This thesis presents Organisational Sustainability Modelling (OSM), a new method to model and analyse risk and return systematically for the adoption of large systems such as Cloud Computing. Return includes improvements in technical efficiency, profitability and service. Risk includes controlled risk (risk-control rate) and uncontrolled risk (beta), although uncontrolled risk cannot be evaluated directly. Three OSM metrics, actual return value, expected return value and risk-control rate are used to calculate uncontrolled risk. The OSM data collection process in which hundreds of datasets (rows of data containing three OSM metrics in each row) are used as inputs is explained. Outputs including standard error, mean squared error, Durbin-Watson, p-value and R-squared value are calculated. Visualisation is used to illustrate quality and accuracy of data analysis. The metrics, process and interpretation of data analysis is presented and the rationale is explained in the review of the OSM method. Three case studies are used to illustrate the validity of OSM: • National Health Service (NHS) is a technical application concerned with backing up data files and focuses on improvement in efficiency. • Vodafone/Apple is a cost application and focuses on profitability. • The iSolutions Group, University of Southampton focuses on service improvement using user feedback. The NHS case study is explained in detail. The expected execution time calculated by OSM to complete all backup activity in Cloud-based systems matches actual execution time to within 0.01%. The Cloud system shows improved efficiency in both sets of comparisons. All three case studies confirm there are benefits for the adoption of a large computer system such as the Cloud. Together these demonstrations answer the two research questions for this thesis: 1. How do you model and analyse risk and return on adoption of large computing systems systematically and coherently? 2. Can the same method be used in risk mitigation of system adoption? Limitations of this study, a reproducibility case, comparisons with similar approaches, research contributions and future work are also presented.

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