The relationship between enterprise risk management and managerial judgement in decision-making: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Enterprise risk management (ERM) promises to improve decision-making and help organizations avoid wicked problems. Consequently, risk artefacts may play a significant role in managers’ decision-making processes, but little is known about the relationship between ERM and managerial judgement in decision-making (MJDM). The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic literature review of ERM, thereby filling this knowledge gap and providing an evidence-based foundation for improving practice and advancing knowledge and theory development. Based on an analysis and synthesis of 33 articles published between 2009 and 2021, we identify four contextual, five technical, three social and five cognitive factors that interact with MJDM. We find that regulation and corporate governance, ERM artefact design reconfiguration and use, social capital interactions and spaces and perceptions have the most support. We distinguish between three different modes of judgement: risk measurement, risk envisionment and risk qualculation. We find that risk qualculation, which employs quantitative and qualitative data and social interpretations of risks and uncertainties, is more likely to be useful in managerial decision-making, particularly when attempting to address wicked problems. We also find that human cognition significantly impacts ERM design, implementation and use, and how those change over time. This paper also develops a new narrative and conceptualization of the relationship between ERM and MJDM, which is presented in an integrative framework. Finally, we encourage researchers to adopt cognitive theories and related concepts that are better suited for examining the ERM–MJDM relationship and to take a cognitive turn in future ERM research.