Topic

Risk Analysis for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) Mishap

Instructions

Risk and its management is a multifaceted topic that must be addressed by all organisations in a variety of ways. As such, your paper will allow you to demonstrate a deeper level of understanding of an area of your choice.

Therefore you should choose ONE of the following essays:

Select a company or organisation that has gone or is going through a significant change and research how risks at the business level are being managed. Critically discuss how risk and stakeholders were managed and suggest alternatives that could have improved the result. Draw on your own experience and reflections resulting from your previous work and/or the seminar programme to critically discuss the strengths and limitations of various tools and techniques.
Choose a project completed or in execution and research how project risk was managed. Critically discuss how risk and stakeholders were managed and suggest alternatives that could have improved the result. Draw on your own experience and reflections resulting from your previous work and/or the seminar programme to critically discuss the strengths and limitations of various tools and techniques.
Identify an incident where risk management failed. Complete a root cause analysis and critically discuss what happened and how stakeholders were managed. Suggest alternative approaches and lessons learnt making reference to the literature on accidents. Draw on your own experience and reflections resulting from your previous work and/or the seminar programme to critically discuss the strengths and limitations of various tools and techniques.
Identify a contested technology and critically discuss how different conceptions of risk (i.e. probabilistic, psychometric, cultural etc.) are shaping the public debate about acceptance of the technology. Critically discuss how stakeholders are being managed and suggest alternatives. Draw on your own experience and reflections resulting from your previous work and/or the seminar programme to critically discuss the strengths and limitations of various tools and techniques.

Words: 3000, 22 references minimum (Harvard).

Answer preview

Risks essentially refer to adverse events that are likely to occur in a process. When a risk occurs, it typically results in negative impacts for the activity or project. A risk involves an ambiguity or uncertainty and is characterized by a perception that an adverse event is likely to occur, and when it does the process or activity would suffer unwanted effects (Thamhain, 2013). It is on this note that project managers need risk management plans, which are designed to decrease the probability of an adverse event occurring, and its potential impacts while optimizing the probability of positive events or opportunities.

Word count: 3479