SCSM 451: Operational Risk Management

This course discusses the role of "operational risk management" in different aspects of business. The course starts with a session on definitions and preliminary discussion to show the big picture of the risk management discipline. The course then shows how different risks that an organization faces can be categorized according to their natures, probabilities and impacts. This is followed by describing how the probability of these risks can be reduced and how the impacts can be mitigated. The course finally focusses on how an organization can recover faster and more efficiently from a realized risk. Throughout this course, the emphasis is to show not only the importance of managing the inevitable risks as a source of threat, but also the possibility of using risk management techniques to turn risks into a source of opportunity for organizations. This course is different from "financial risk management" since it does not discuss financial instruments to hedge against risks. Rather, it tries to show how "operational decision" can influence the probability and impacts of different types of risks. In addition, this class discusses how to plan for recovery processes.