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The paper aims to explore a risk‐finance context in which less information may be preferable to more information.

Insurance companies collect a variety of information on potential policyholders to support two fundamental components of risk classification: underwriting (the determination of whether or not to offer an insurance contract to a particular individual or firm) and rating (the calculation of a policyholder's premium level once a contract has been offered). Although risk classification is necessary in voluntary markets to ensure that most individuals or firms will be able to purchase insurance, it is not necessary when the purchase of insurance is required by government. The paper explores the usefulness of risk‐classification‐related information in the context of government‐mandated insurance.

In the case of government‐mandated insurance, it is shown that risk classification may be more or less useful, depending upon the degree to which policyholders are able to obtain substantial premium reductions for risk control efforts. When such reductions are not available, then risk classification is not only “less useful,” but in fact particularly unjust to certain policyholders.

The paper describes an insurance context in which less information is preferable to more information.

The classification of criminal acts as violent or nonviolent should be a keystone of actuarial predictors of violent recidivism, as it affects their outcome measure and scoring of criminal history, thus influencing many decisions about sentencing, release and treatment allocation. Examination of existing actuarial and clinical violence risk assessment tools and research studies reveals considerable variation in the classifications used. This paper aims to use large samples to develop an alternative, empirically grounded classification that can be used to improve actuarial predictive scores within the offender assessment system (OASys), the tool used by the National Offender Management Service of England and Wales to assess static and dynamic risk.

Two analytical steps are implemented. First, to identify offences that frequently involve violent acts, 230,334 OASys cases are analyzed for indicators of violent content. Second, the ability of dynamic and static risk factors to predict reoffending for various offence types is investigated, analyzing 26,619 OASys cases that have official recidivism data.

The resulting empirical classification of violent offences adds public order, criminal damage, threats/harassment, robbery/aggravated burglary and weapon possession offences to the central group of homicide and assault offences. The need to assess risk of sexual recidivism separately is discussed.

This study has successfully produced an offence classification for use in a new predictor of violent recidivism. The use of empirical methods to select these offences helps to maximise predictive validity.

This paper aims to reviews Sukuk risk classification schemes based on extending and adapting the risk classification schemes of conventional finance. It is then argued that risk classification schemes based on Sukuk structure provide significant insights into Sukuk risk not obtainable from conventional schemes. This is because Sukuk structure risk classification schemes link Sukuk risk more directly to the fundamental causal factors creating those risks. These links are less evident in conventional risk classification schemes. It is hypothesised that Sukuk structure risk factors will prove to be highly significant in multifactor expected return regressions.

The paper argues that, given the paucity of the empirical data currently available to researchers in Islamic finance, greater care needs to be taken in hypothesis development than is necessary for conventional finance. The limited data available should be used for testing hypotheses and not “wasted” in hypothesis formation. Through a meta-analysis of the existing literature on Sukuk risk, it is hypothesised that Sukuk structure risks will be highly significant in explaining Sukuk returns and returns volatilities in empirical tests.

The main Sukuk structures, debt based, equity based, assets based, agency based and hybrid structures, arise directly from the requirement of Sukuk to conform to the Shariah and to the fundamental ethical principles of Islamic finance and business. Further, Sukuk risk profiles are directly related to Sukuk structures. Thus, Sukuk structure risks are essentially Shariah risks. The paper presents a Sukuk risk classification matrix based on an evaluation of Sukuk structure risks.

The findings on the relation of Sukuk risks to Sukuk structures require corroboration by rigorous empirical tests.

The paper contributes to work on the creation of evidence-based risk management techniques in Islamic finance and to the expansion of ethical financial management.

The paper is one of the early detailed academic studies on the evaluation of risks arising from Sukuk structures.

Explains the importance of assessing country risk to lenders and investors, outlines previous research on techniques for doing this and describes a classification method: the multi‐group hierarchical discrimination method (MHD). Applies this to 1978‐1995 data for 143 countries, subdivided into four income groups, and compares the results with those from multiple discriminant, logit and probit analyses using jackknife procedures. Finds MHD more accurate overall and for most income groups except the lower‐middle income economies. Briefly considers other applications for MHD and avenues for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a supplier risk framework. The framework provides the information about the risk level in which a supplier is classified. This study is part of the company’s one- department-one-improvement policy. This policy encourages all departments to look for way to improve process management. For this study, the Purchasing Department attempts to extend its supplier management practices by integrating the risk consideration.

This work is considered as a case study. The study integrates the benchmarking and classification concepts for this extension. The involvement from the company’s purchasing department is critical. There are several steps that have been undertaken. Included are the selection of the supplies to be considered (i.e. packaging), the analysis of the formal complaints by the ratio-format indicator, the four criteria used for the classification, the risk level identification, and the next steps for improving supplier management. The results are verified by the use of cluster analysis. The data are from departmental staffs and manager.

Based on the results, with the four agreed criteria (e.g. regional location, ownership type, joint venture, and registered capital and size), there are altogether four risk levels which are high, medium, low, and minimal.. For the packaging materials, most suppliers belong to the low and minimal risk levels (or 19 out of 27 suppliers). Future activities are then developed and added into the company’s ISO 9001: 2008 manual.

The suppliers’ risk levels with corresponding future actions represent positive contributions to the purchasing department. Integrating supplier risk is based on the applications of benchmarking (i.e. the use of the ratio-format indicators) and classification (i.e. the need to understand the nature of the risk level) frameworks. Future actions to mitigate the risk are also proposed and incorporated into the purchasing department’s procedure.

The project underlines the roles and importance of benchmarking in strengthening the supplier management processes. It also highlights the practicality and benefits of benchmarking when linking with the classification concept for addressing today business problems.

The purpose of this paper is to present a critical review of a criterion of risk, created to assess the flood risk of the international heritage building. In order to evaluate this criterion, it was applied to a sample of Portuguese building heritage.

This effort will start with the definition of the most important historical buildings in Portugal, its location and a full study about its constitution considering not only the materials they are made to but also the layers and the influence of the porosity/porometry for the drying process. Then it will also crucial the classification of the flood risk occurrence having in mind the previous information. A mapping will be made with the classification here developed.

This work presents a critical review of the main information related with the Portuguese monuments classified as “National Monuments”. A new empirical model was proposed takes into account all of the factors defined as the most influent in flood risk determination. A risk map was created on the basis classification developed. It will be possible to observe that a significant amount of Portuguese monuments are classified as medium to high risk of flooding.

This paper presents a new methodology to analyse the flood risk of international heritage building. The main benefit of the work is that it discusses the importance architectural heritage and justifies the need to safeguard it from extreme climatic phenomena such as floods.

Studies addressing barriers to implement lean production (LP) from the perspective of risk management (RM) have not been so usual in the literature. Re-interpreting barriers to lean as potential risks that should be avoided or mitigated, this paper aims to identify and categorise risks in the implementation of LP to propose a framework, which provides an overview of risks that negatively influence this process.

Through a systematic literature review exploring papers in the Web of Knowledge database, 69 papers were selected. A descriptive analysis was first carried out to identify the evolution in the number of papers, usual terminologies, research methods, analytic tools and the RM phases approached by each paper. After that, an in-depth study of the paper sample was conducted to find risk factors and categories.

The authors found a list of 61 risk factors. Then, considering the sources of the identified risk factors, six broad categories of risks were defined, namely, top management risks, human resources risks, lean knowledge risks, technical risks, supply chain risks and cultural risks. The authors also defined 34 subcategories, resulting in a risk classification framework.

Based on the review, the authors identified literature gaps and provided a research agenda. A noteworthy research limitation is that the authors only selected papers about LP, so the authors might have missed some potential risks in lean implementation that may arise from other-related areas. Thus, the exploration of lean risks adopting other perspectives may constitute a promising pathway for further research.

The classification framework may help practitioners and researchers in risk identification, evaluation and mitigation. It can also enable the creation of response plans to risks in lean production implementation, as it indicates the potential risks that may be faced along with this process.

This study contributed to add the perspective of RM to the literature on lean implementation. The introduction of RM concepts and tools may generate more robust models of lean implementation. Therefore, the classification framework may represent a starting point to produce new knowledge about this research topic.

Few issues in business ethics are as polarizing as the practice of risk classification and underwriting in the insurance industry. Theorists who approach the issue from a background in economics often start from the assumption that policy-holders should be charged a rate that reflects the expected loss that they bring to the insurance scheme. Yet theorists who approach the question from a background in philosophy or civil rights law often begin with a presumption against so-called “actuarially fair” premiums and in favor of “community rating,” in which everyone is charged the same price. This paper begins by examining and rejecting the three primary arguments that have been given to show that actuarially fair premiums are unjust. It then considers the two primary arguments that have been offered by those who wish to defend the practice of risk classification. These arguments overshoot their target, by requiring a “freedom to underwrite” that is much greater than the level of freedom enjoyed in most other commercial transactions. The paper concludes by presenting a defense of a more limited right to underwrite, one that grants the legitimacy of the central principle of risk classification, but permits specific deviations from that ideal when other important social goods are at stake.

Buyer companies’ engagement with suppliers varies according to their specific business needs. Prior models of supplier classification are based on the dimensions like product specification or criticality of purchase. As the supply chains are embracing collaboration among partners to respond to the dynamic market conditions, it is prudent to study the changes adopted by buyer companies for supplier classification. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This is an exploratory research for identifying the criteria used for supplier classification based on the interviews of practitioners from buyer multinational manufacturing companies operating in India. The content analysis of the subjective responses led to the identification of distinctive criteria.

Although, many of the practitioners were unaware of the model per se, they labelled their suppliers as per the types stated in the Kraljic model. They mentioned twenty six criteria for supplier classification; five of which do not have any reference in the extant literature. The degree of presence of these criteria provides a multi-criteria framework for supplier classification that has been further extended based on prior models.

The exploratory nature of the study, its confinement to Indian milieu and small sample size could limit the generality and exhaustiveness of the findings.

The framework and its extension can be used by practitioners in assessing and classifying their suppliers for strengthening supply chain collaboration.

This research unveils five new criteria used by buyer companies for supplier classification. The multi-criteria framework for supplier classification and its extension give new insights into the supplier characteristics significant for supply chain collaboration.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species in achieving biodiversity conservation and preventing the extinction of species. The Red List is a calculative device that classifies species in terms of their exposure to the risk of extinction.

The paper draws on theorising in the Social Studies of Finance literature to analyse the Red List in terms of how it frames a space of calculability for species extinction. The analysis then traces the ways that this framing has overflowed, creating conditions for calculative innovations, such that assemblages of humans and calculative devices (i.e. agencements) are constructed with collective capabilities to act to conserve biodiversity and prevent species extinctions.

This paper has traced three ways that the Red List frame has overflowed, leading to calculative innovations and the construction of new agencements. The overflow of relations between the quality of “extinction risk”, produced by the Red List, and other qualities, such as location, has created opportunities for conservationists to develop agencements capable of formulating conservation strategies. The overflow of relations between the identity of the “threatened species”, produced by the Red List, and other features of evaluated species, has created opportunities for conservationists to develop agencements capable of impelling participation in conservation efforts. The overflow of ecological relations between species, discarded by the Red List’s hierarchical metrology of extinction risk classifications, has created opportunities for conservationists to develop agencements capable of confronting society with the reality of an extinction crisis.

The paper contributes to the accounting for biodiversity literature by addressing its fundamental challenge: explaining how accounting can create conditions within society in which biodiversity conservation is made possible.