Risk Assessment And Decision Making In Business And Industry: A Practical Guide - Second Edition

This comprehensive volume covers four broad aspects of R/U: general concepts, implementation processes, technical aspects, and examples of application. Each section provides practical guidance, combining technical information with advice on how to implement R/U techniques and processes in real-world corporate environments. Following an examination of general principles involved in quantitatively assessing risks and their impact on value, the book describes the two main probabilistic measures of project value - Expected Value of Success (EVS) and the Expected Value for the Portfolio (EVP). The text clearly demonstrates how these metrics are used in individual-project and portfolio management.

By presenting concepts in layman's terms and fully integrating advice related to technical and human characteristics of R/U-related corporate life, this book serves as a complete primer for professionals in any business environment.

What's New in the Second Edition: · Provides guidance for implementation of R/U processes in modern corporations · Offers a crucial breakthrough by defining the terms "risk" and "uncertainty" in ways that can be applied in all aspects of science and business · Explores real-world impediments to process change and implementation · Addresses R/U from a corporate decision-maker's perspective, detailing how to employ R/U to set budgets, manage portfolios, value investments, and execute other critical tasks ---------------------Features--------------------- · Addresses the technical, organizational, cultural, political, and human aspects of R/U-based processes · Describes two crucial measures, EVS and EVP, and clearly delineates and demonstrates how they are employed in individual-project and portfolio management · Considers the practical problems faced by decision-makers, including the estimation of the impact of new information, deciding the questions to ask to determine information quality, and determining the new techniques to integrate into a decision-making scheme

The author has a good style, and the text does not contain the usual fluff and buzzwords often found in business-oriented books. Check it out!


Great for Beginners and Intermediates!!   March 14, 2001
Terence D. Condren (Wellesley Hills, MA USA)
12 out of 16 found this review helpful

This book does an excellent job of laying out the basic of risk assessment, including all of the non-mathematical aspects, such as office politics and educating others in the use of risk models. It's easy to understand, even if you don't have a strong math background. I'm an English major, so I should know!


Interesting ideas and approach, but quirky in the technical aspects   October 11, 2008
M. Fisher
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

This was an interesting book to read due to its offering of some alternative ways to look at risk assessment. The fresh approach was enjoyable, as was the emphasis on making risk assessment practical and something that's done over time, not just at the beginning of a venture or project.

The layout of the book was split into two major divisions in my mind. The first half seems to be most focused on how to be a trainer or risk assessment expert. It offers guidance on how to make risk assessment a part of an organization's process and how to increase acceptance of these techniques. The second half focused more on the technical background for risk assessment, including a discussion of probability distributions for modeling uncertainty and then a number of examples (including computer code presumably used in the author's risk software). The second half of the book was much more technical than the first half, which seemed a little unusual to me.

One thing I wasn't too sure about in the book was its characterization of different risk types. The author argued against all the technical names for distributions, but then proposed a variety of distributions that were simply renamed versions of these distributions. Frankly, I found the names to be silly and of no value except for the novelty factor. Further, in discussing the distributions, the charts to go with each distribution are outputs of distribution sampling, rather than raw distributions. This struck me as odd and seemed to be much less useful than it could have been. (An example is the uniform distribution which should represent an equal probability of all values within the range; the figure in the book doesn't show a uniform probability for each value.)

This is a good managerial-type book for risk assessment. It's a worthwhile read and addition to a practitioner's or academic's library. It lacks basics on statistics and risk assessment and really needs to be accompanied by a traditional risk-related book to be most useful.

I give the book 4 stars because it's a good book but has a number of quirks discussed above that detract from the content and made me scratch my head.


Not Impressed   October 13, 2009
David A. Becker
If you want to read two tons of wording and come away with a pound of information then this book is for you. Most of what he says is intuitive. I am in the process of working with and developing a risk assessment format for some new products. I have picked this book up a couple of times,(giving it a second chance)but end up just putting it back on the shelf because it is "empty". I like books that are practical.