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Business risk and inherent risk both bear on the audit; the audit risk model; and the nature, timing, and extent of work performed. Inherent risk and business risk bear an inverse relationship to detec‐tion risk and have a direct effect on the level of work performed. Neither risk can be eliminated totally and neither is controllable by the auditor. Business risk relates to the financial statements and affects overall audit risk; inherent risk applies to an individual audit area. Inherent risk is explicitly included in the professional standards and the audit‐risk model while business risk is not and has only an indirect bearing on the model. Management can take steps to affect the level of inherent risk, but the perceptions of users of the financial statements bear on business risk.

Against the backdrop of the fledgling entrepreneurship development and the imperatives of risk management to mitigate failure, this chapter discusses the impact of risk management practice on the development of African businesses. It also considers how best to align the practice of risk management in order to achieve business continuity. More than ever before, global competitiveness and the need to trade‐out of declining profits are currently driving businesses into risk management efficiencies in order to continue achieving increased returns on assets employed/equities for their shareholders. The attainment of these growth objectives can often be affected by several types of business risk (financial and operational) coupled with unpredicted movements in prices. These movements especially in times of high volatilities impact materially on profit growth potentials regardless of how well a business is managed. This chapter suggests how African business executives can evolve their business management styles to imbed risk management at all stages.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the Eurocentric conceptualisation of “risk” which reinforces rent-seeking language, culture and practices of doing business that are alien to non-European societies. This paper also attempts to engage with Eurocentric methods and strategies that sustain hegemony in international business by promoting “risk” and perpetuating “uncertainty” within the non-European business culture. Such territoriality within basic conceptualisation of in international business is central to manufactured “risks” that reinforces crisis, while state deals successfully or fails to deal with it, the global corporations extract resources and expand their capital and market base in non-European societies while doing business. This paper is divided into two parts: the first part presents the philosophical basis of risks and its historical foundations and the second part deals with the neo-colonial business methods, languages, cultures and strategies which are Eurocentric by nature. This paper argues that manufacturing risk is the Eurocentric business strategy.

This paper draws its methodological lineages to nonlinear historical narrative around the concept and construction of the idea and language of “risk” and “uncertainty”. This paper follows discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003) to locate the way in which the Eurocentric concept of risk was exported and incorporated within the language of international business in non-Western business traditions. While engaging with conceptual discourses, it focusses on the power of language in the process of conceptualisation where “authority comes to language from outside” (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 109). As a result of which the concept does not reflect the objective reality of non-European business culture and its uniqueness while assimilating it within the Western European theoretical traditions of “risk and uncertainty” in international business practice.

The understanding of risk in business within the non-European context needs new ways of conceptualising risk. The updated version of Eurocentric theories, languages and methods of international business and associated risk narrative can never be a starting point. The duality of philosophy in which “economic growth” and “backwardness” measures progress and reduces human experience and objectives of business to seek and expand profit. The starting point of any theoretical analysis on risk in doing business in non-European societies must acknowledge the specificities of their context in terms of local ideas, knowledge, history, language and methods of business practice which is different from Europe.

This paper outlines the Eurocentric conceptualisation of “risk” which reinforces rent-seeking language, culture and practices of doing business that are alien to non-European societies. It engages with the Eurocentric methods and strategies that sustain hegemony in international business by promoting “risk” and perpetuating “uncertainty” within the non-European business culture. Such territoriality within basic conceptualisation of in international business is central to manufactured “risks” that reinforces crisis; while state deals successfully or fails to deal with it; the global corporations extract resources and expand their capital and market base in non-European societies while doing business. This paper is divided into two parts: the first part presents the philosophical basis of risks and its historical foundations; the second part deals with the neo-colonial business methods, languages, cultures and strategies which are Eurocentric by nature. This paper argues that manufacturing risk is the Eurocentric business strategy. This paper argues for a new language, a new method and a new strategy of doing business by decolonising the discipline of international business.

The author considers the issue of business continuity planning and asks whether it can cope with the emerging risks of a new century and whether it fits with the move to an enterprise risk approach. She assesses all the many risks involved from outsourcing to reputation risk and from the loss of intellectual assets to the loss of information systems. Her conclusion is that more concentration on a enterprise risk model is required.

This paper aims to shed light on the potential downsides of risk aversion in family firms. Moreover, it seeks to provide measures on how to balance risk taking and risk aversion in family businesses.

The article first presents four “dark sides” of risk aversion in family businesses and then describes three groups of measures to balance risk aversion and risk taking. Both the dark sides as well as the measures to balance risk aversion and risk taking are derived from recent scientific research.

Family businesses may decrease risk aversion and foster risk taking and innovativeness by creating transparency on their risk profiles and including outside knowledge in the form of non-family managers, directors or shareholders. Moreover, properly educating and integrating younger family generations might also alleviate an overly high focus on short-term risk aversion.

Family business leaders might find the approach and findings presented in this paper helpful for securing the longer-term survivability of their firms and for improving innovativeness.

This article is among the first to deal with the dark sides of risk aversion in family businesses, which might endanger their longer-term survivability.

This study aims to investigate whether firms’ involvement in socially provocative business activities or businesses that are inconsistent with Shariah principles affect auditor’s perceived risk associated with the financial reporting information.

This study uses a median regression with measures that are consistent with prior literature. This study comprises of 11,799 firm-year observations obtained from MSCI environmental, sustainable and governance STATS database.

The results provide evidence indicating that auditors relatively charge higher audit fees for Shariah non-compliant firms except for firms that are involved with alcohol and gambling businesses. Firms that are involved in gambling activities report relatively lower audit fees, whereas firms with high involvement in alcohol business activities report non-significant relationship with audit fees.

The findings suggest that on average, ethical contextualisation on perceived acceptable behaviours is relatively consistent across beliefs and the severe lack of it has implications on auditors’ business risk assessment. However, as a social construct, the conception of ethical behaviour is highly dependent on the change in the societal values and therefore this explains the variance in the expected findings for gambling and alcohol business activities.

This study adds to the existing business risk literature, by examining the under-explored association between Shariah non-compliant risk and auditors’ perceived risk, measured by audit fees in a non-Muslim majority setting.

This study examines the stakeholder perception of the sustainability risks, challenges and benefits arising from managing these risks in the Singapore construction industry.

A questionnaire consisting of 89 risk factors, challenges and benefits, was administered, with 216 responses received from various stakeholders. Regression analyses were used to estimate the relationships between sustainability and business risk factors, challenges and benefits associated with business sustainability practices.

Stakeholders recognise the importance of the emerging sustainability risk factors, and indeed rank these almost on a par with conventional business risk factors. The inherent business risks determine the nature of sustainability risk factors for construction firms, which in turn can affect their business risks and the performance and value creation of firms. However, most stakeholders, while acknowledging that business sustainability practices can provide benefits as well as posing challenges, do not believe that they can derive net benefits from such practices.

Through this perception study, there is an urgent need to turn the existing awareness of the importance of business sustainability (BS) practices into more consistent and solid actions among construction firms in Singapore.

This study’s results imply construction firms to incorporate BS practices more systematically into their business strategies and operations, and to include sustainability risk factors alongside conventional business risks in their risk registers and risk management frameworks.

This study consolidates various variables and constructs of BS matters in the literature and practice into a meaningful framework for the management of BS in the construction industry.

This research investigates what is driving corporate sustainability within South African organisations and to what extent these drivers intersect with risk management. This is important as new and emerging business risks are proving to be directly linked to sustainability issues having implication on long-term organisational performance. This implies that sustainability and risk should not be mutually exclusive.

By means of semi-structured interviews, sustainability managers of 11 South African organisations were engaged to gain insight relating to the immediate sustainability issues, risk landscape and the possible intersection between these issues within their organisations. Questions posed were around drivers of sustainability, risks to an organisation, changes in risks, relationship between sustainability and risk. By means of thematic analysis key issues emerging from the responses of the sustainability managers could be identified and themes determined based on similarities. This was followed by trend analysis of the frequency of responses to different sustainability and risk themes to interpret the data.

Results reveal that sustainability and risk management are similar in their intent purpose and output both aligned towards reducing impacts and managing uncertainty. However even though sustainability has increasingly become integral to business its value contribution and linkage with risk management differ significantly amongst organisations. This suggests that sustainability and risk management remain two distinct frameworks for managing uncertainty in business.

Research on integrating a sustainability perspective in risk management is at an early stage. To understand and respond to emerging risks, organisations need to integrate sustainability and risk management into their decision strategies – not only to minimize potential losses but also to exploit new business opportunities arising from the sustainability agenda. Future research should be directed towards advancing systematic methods for identifying and managing sustainability risks such that key sustainability challenges are firmly embedded in the risk management of the business. In this regard, organisations would be in a position to build resilience into their business models and operations.

Emphasising the significance of managing environmental and social issues for businesses, the chapter aims at highlighting the need of developing a non-financial risk management system for elevating corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in China. Particularly, through discussing its importance, opportunities, and challenges.

Analysis and discussion of the chapter are based on multiple sources of information. Review of literature includes authoritative academic articles, reports from renowned global organisations, media coverage of corporations, and examples of business cases in China.

Several key findings are covered in the chapter. First of all, environmental and social concerns are usually being deemed as intangible issues that need to be properly articulated and managed by an effective non-financial risk management system for enhancing corporate sustainability in China. Secondly, through different interpretations of sustainability, links could be drawn for non-financial risk management and sustainability. Thirdly, by explaining the impacts from non-financial risk management to sustainable development and profits, the chapter has argued CSR as a clear business case for any company in China. Fourthly, challenges are also portrayed for the effective management of non-financial risk management by corporations. Finally, the need of a well-defined non-financial risk management system for helping businesses to be more competitive, thus, moving closer to sustainability in China and elsewhere is provided.

Integrating environmental and social risks is critical to the effective management of any corporation’s real risks and to improve resource allocation in a sustainable fashion. This demands a systematic and strategic identification of issues through non-financial risk management. Most significantly, this chapter has shown the way this can be achieved by any corporation in China, and the concepts can be applied into other societies.

The contribution of the chapter is thought to be significant. Although there exists a wide body of research on sustainable development, risk management and CSR in China, there is limited insight into how corporations can effectively conceptualise such intangible or non-financial risks in relation to sustainability.