I’ve said it before: the Aberdeen Group’s “Executive Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Agenda” report clearly and authoritatively presents the current state of global ERM.

I was leafing through my well-worn copy of the report last week and came across an interesting analysis of the organizational-culture differences between best-in-class ERM practitioners and lagging ERM practitioners. more

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

How many times have you heard, uttered, or heard someone from your company express that phrase to an external stakeholder?

The phrase is the quintessential cop-out apology (it translates to: “This is your problem, not my fault”), and it qualifies as the personal version of “… the organization agrees to pay the fine without acknowledging any wrongdoing.” more

Advocates of a value-added tax for the United States have been lying low since April, when the Senate passed a nonbinding resolution expressing opposition to the idea by a crushing 85-13 majority. In an effort to make sure the proposal stays dead, the National Retail Federation today released a study painting a lurid picture of the downside of a tax that’s been widely touted as at least a partial cure for the country’s deficit woes. more

Can you find the information you need when you need it? You probably don’t lose track of the big things like the CEO’s latest budget memo. It’s finding the small things — information about a secondary supplier, an invoice from a couple of months ago, or a memo on pending regulation — that often proves to be the biggest time waster when it comes to seeking information.

At those points, don’t you wish you had Google for your enterprise? Just type a few key words and, presto, the lost invoice comes right up. Nice thought, but it doesn’t work that way in the real world, as Leslie Owens explains in her Forrester Research report on enterprise search. To get the full report, click here.

In the report, Owens evaluated enterprise search vendors against 147 criteria. Of course, the big players, such as Autonomy, IBM, Oracle, and FAST (a Microsoft subsidiary), stand out but so do some lesser-knowns like Vivisimo and other interesting niche players. As Owens notes, search is a highly competitive buyer’s market, making it practical for companies to get both the best value and best fit. more

Bloomberg Businessweek’s special report on risk management contains some good reading.

This story addresses the risk cultures within organizations. Here’s a passage:

Nearly half of executive teams lack the information they need to manage effectively because employees withhold vital input out of fear that doing otherwise will reflect poorly on them. This restricted information flow can cripple a company’s ability to identify and respond to internal and external threats. A recent survey by the Corporate Executive Board of more than 400,000 employees across various industries reveals that companies that break down two key barriers to honest feedback not only reduce fraud and misconduct, but also deliver peer-beating shareholder returns by a substantial margin.

This article examines the changing role of the chief audit executive, a topic spelled out in more detail in this white paper. Here’s a taste of the article:

With risk now a core focus for boards of directors and senior executives, the CAE, who has traditionally been relegated to the tactical execution of an annual audit plan, is uniquely positioned to play a central role in the risk-intelligent company, thanks to his or her visibility into, and understanding of, the enterprise’s holistic risk-management activities. For companies to maximize the strategic contributions of the CAE, however, they must have both a business-aware auditor and an audit-aware board and leadership group. ###