Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Social Computing Tools for Inter-Organizational Risk
Management
Walter Castelnovo
University of Insubria, Via Carloni, Italy
walter.castelnovo@uninsubria.it
Abstract: Social computing technologies, tools and applications are changing the way in which people and
organizations communicate and interact. Although, the real benefits of an organization’s use of social computing
tools are still unclear, researches found that successful companies not only integrate social computing tools
within their workflows but also use them to create a “networked company”. Both these elements are relevant in
the use of social computing tools for supporting inter-organizational risk management discussed in this paper.
More specifically, with reference to the case of One Stop Shop for production activities in Italy, in the paper I will
show how social computing tools can be used to make more efficient and effective inter-organizational risk
management, that can be considered as a form of inter-organizational cooperation for the management of the
risks related to activities involving the joint effort of different organizations. In the first section I will introduce interorganizational
risk management and I will describe the Team Risk Management (TRM) model, that has been
originally developed to manage risks in software-dependent development programs involving different
organizations. In section 2, I will present a particular cooperation scenario concerning One Stop Shop for
production activities (Sportello Unico per le Attività Produttive – SUAP) in Italy that can be used as a case study
for inter-organizational risk management. In this section I will also show how the TRM model can be modified to
describe the way in which the public agencies involved in the functioning of the SUAP can manage risks at the
inter-organizational level. In section 3 I will show how organizations can integrate social computing tools within
intra-organizational processes to make their risk assessment more efficient and effective. Finally, I will show how
social computing tools can also be integrated within the inter-organizational processes that lead different
agencies to share the risk evaluation and the risk handling actions.
Keywords: inter-organizational cooperation, inter-organizational risk management, team risk management,
social computing, eterprise 2.0, government 2.0
1. Introduction
Organizations are continuously faced with the problem of making decisions. Such decisions can
concern many different aspects of an organization’s activity and may impact the organization in the
long, medium and short term, depending on whether they are strategic, tactical or operational
decisions. Every decision is made within an environment that changes continuously; a possible
uncertainty regarding its eventual outcomes is thus an unavoidable ingredient of any decision, which
could also imply a possible loss for the organization as a consequence of the decision made.
When an organization is required to make a decision in a situation in which there is some uncertainty
with respect to the eventual outcome and a possible loss associated with it, the decision making
process involves a risk (Alberts and Dorofee 2005). Any organization must deal with risk because it
cannot avoid making decisions. Hence, risk management should be considered as a central part of
any organisation’s strategic management.
Risk management is the process whereby organisations handle the risks attached to their activities on
the basis of standard tools and methodologies. Any risk management system should include
processes for assessing risk (risk identification, analysis and evaluation), developing risk-handling
options, monitoring risks to determine how risks have changed, and documenting the overall risk
management programme (see, for instance (ISO 2009) and (AIRMIC, ALARM, IRM 2010)).
Communication and coordination are of central concern for risk management. Actually, a possible
threat to the organization can be detected anywhere within it; without a well defined communication
and reporting policy that allows a prompt assessment and evaluation of the potential risk detected, the
effectiveness of risk management can be severely reduced.
Communication is essential also for risk treatment and risk monitoring. The implementation of the risk
handling options can introduce secondary risks that need to be assessed, treated, monitored and
reviewed. When a risk treatment action is undertaken on a given activity, it cannot be excluded that,
as an indirect consequence of it, a new risk arises with respect to other activities interrelated with that
activity. In order to handle a secondary risk detected as a consequence of a given risk treatment
action, it could happen that some activities, different from the one the risk treatment action has been
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