ORMS and Risk Management Failures: What are We Doing Wrong?

Presenting Author: John R. Birge, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chcago, IL 60637, United States of America, john.birge@chicagoGSB.edu

Abstract: The events contributing to the global financial crisis and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill appear to represent cataclysmic failures of risk management within some of the most technologically capable organizations. In retrospect, even the most basic OR analysis should have avoided these disasters and their enduring consequences. Why then did these calamities occur and what is ORMS's responsibility? This talk will focus on some of these events in detail and offer possible explanations for ORMS's failure to avert them. We will then consider potential resolutions of the underlying causes of these failures and implications for ORMS's future development in practice and academic research.

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