Enterprise Risk Management measurement: Insights from an interdisciplinary literature review

Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) represents a paradigm envisioned to provide an organization both resilience and opportunity in the face of uncertainty. The de-bate around ERM’s value contribution to the organization has led to key ERM re-search questions arising, highlighting the need for further investigation of empiri-cal measurement of ERM and its implementation. Calls from several scholars specifically request extending the academic body of knowledge on ERM meas-urement. Motivated by the above calls, this study presents the findings of a systematic review of the ERM literature. The review examines the academic discipline of journals existing ERM studies are published in, these journals’ H-indices, the lo-cation of the studies, and the methodology of how ERM is measured in the stud-ies. The review establishes that the ERM literature cuts across several academic research disciplines such as accounting, finance and strategy. Moreover, the ex-tant literature underscores that it is very difficult to quantify and measure ERM in practice within organizations. Consequential to this, most empirical studies of ERM have emphasized either a qualitative approach focusing in depth on specific organizations, or a quantitative approach relying on accessible, basic secondary data available in company reports. A gap in knowledge is presented around ex-tending ERM measurement, in particular in terms of a methodology based on primary data collection and analysis. This paper concludes that further development of empirical measurement scales based on primary data, whereby direct, first-hand input from members of organi-zations implementing ERM is collected, will augment the ERM body of knowledge. Such scales will allow for important aspects of ERM as it is imple-mented in the organization to be empirically measured.